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THE BABYLONIAN UNIVERSE 

See Appendix 

The upright central line is the axis of the heavens and earth. The two seven-staged pyramids 
represent the earth, the upper being the abode of living men, the under one the abode of the dead. 
The separating waters are the four seas. The seven inner homocentric globes are respectively the 
domains and special abodes of Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Ishtar, Nergal, Marduk, and Ninib, each being a 
"world -ruler" in his own planetary sphere. The outermost of the spheres, that of Anu and Ea, is the 
heaven of the fixed stars. The axis from center to zenith marks "the Way of Anu"; the axis from 
center to nadir "the Way of Ea." — See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1908, pp. 
977f?. Also "The Earliest Cosmologies," by W. F. Warren, pp. 33-40. 



The Religions of the World 
and the World-Religion 

AN OUTLINE FOR PERSONAL AND CLASS USE 



BY 

WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN 

DUNICZPROFESSOR IN BOSTON UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



J'^iV 



^l* 






ii 



Copyright, 191 1, by 
EATON & MAINS 



IV 



CCI.Ai;97413 

IVo.t 



RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 

TO MY 

BELOVED FORMER PUPILS 

NOW LABORING 

ON EVERY CONTINENT 

TO TRANSFIGURE 

THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

INTO THE 

ONE PERFECTED AND ALL-REGNANT 
WORLD-RELIGION 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Frontispiece ii 

Dedication v 

Preface ix 

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

Chapter Page 

I. Subject-Matter of the Study i 

II. Admissibility of the Scientific Method 4 

III. Procedures and Resulting Groups of Sciences 9 

IV. Sources, Proximate and Remote 12 

V. Personal Equipment 14 

VI. Auxiliary Sciences 15 

VII. Attractiveness, Utility, and Perils of the Study 16 

BOOK FIRST 

The Religious Phenomena of the World Historically Considered 

Introduction 23 

Division First 

History of Particular Religions and of their Subordinate Forms. 27 

Division Second 

History of Religious Manifestations coinmon to several Reli- 
gions; culminating in ComjDarative Histories of related Re- 
ligions 40 

Division Third 

History of Religious Manifestations common to all Religions; 

culminating in a History of Religion Universally Considered. . 42 

BOOK SECOND 

The Religious Phenomena of the World Systematically Considered 

Introduction 47 

Division First 

Systematic Exposition of Particular Religions and of their Sub- 
ordinate Forms 49 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

Division Second Page 

Systematic Exposition of Religious Manifestations common to 
several Religions; culminating in Comparative Theologies of 
related Religions 51 

Division Third 

Systematic Exposition of Religious Manifestations common to 
all Religions; culminating in a Science of Religion Universally 
Considered 53 

BOOK THIRD 

The Religious Phenomena of the World Philosophically Considered 

Introduction 57 

Division First 

Human Personality in its Relation to the Divine 59 

Division Second 

The Divine Personality in its Relation to the Human 62 

Division Third 

The Past, Present, and Future Interrelations of God and Man. 
Part First: As seen in the Ideal; Part Second: As given in 
Christian Consciousness; Part Third: As determined and ever 
redetermined in the total historic life of the World-Religion. . 65 

APPENDIX 

I. The Nature and Naturalness of Religion 79 

II. A Quest of the Perfect Religion 88 

III. Ancient Conceptions of the Universe 102 

Blanks for Fortnightly Reports {next to the Cover) 



PREFACE 

In view of the unmanageable mass of material to be dealt 
with, every teacher whose task it is to present the nature and 
the chief historic forms of religion, has felt the need of printed 
helps which, without hampering him in the free shaping of his 
own lectures or lecture courses, will prove time-saving and help- 
ful when placed in the hands of his students. It is hoped and 
believed that the present volume will be found such a help. 

In any case, it is the fruit of long experience. In the year 
1873, in Boston University, was established the first chair ever 
instituted in an American university for instruction in religions 
and religion in the widest possible sense. x\t the outset its occu- 
pant saw that, whatever the scope, and whatever the method of 
the work about to be attempted, the student would need for his 
orientation, first of all, a general introduction to the total field. 
It was also plain that, without waiting to complete this prelimi- 
nary survey, the teacher could profitably start the student on 
helpful courses of reading, and even on independent investiga- 
tions of historic questions in many fields. Moreover, as the 
experiment went on, it was quickly seen that, with classes often 
exceeding fifty in number, it was desirable to conduct the stu- 
dents along several lines of research at once ; for the reason 
that no library could be expected to provide the referred-to 
books in such numbers that half a hundred men could simul- 
taneously work on the same questions. In a short time a group 
of annually modified courses grew up, some of them adapted 
for use in alternate years, yet all so elastic that in every field of 
importance the latest discoveries and the latest discussions 

ix 



X 



PREFACE 



could each season receive appropriate attention. It is hardly 
possible to show the nature, and methods, and interrelations of 
these courses more briefly than in the following announcement 
of the work of the chair as given several years past in the Year 
Book of the University : 

The following courses are integral parts of one comprehensive scheme 
of instruction extending through the year. The first occupies some eight 
weeks of the autumn, the second and third extend through the winter, the 
fourth to the end of the year. The work follows an unpublished printed 
outline, which is supplemented by lectures, discussions, assigned readings, 
reports, and class essays. 

1. General Introduction to the Scientific Study of the Religious Phe- 

nomena of the World. 

This course treats of the subject-matter of the study in general; the 
question of the admissibility of the scientific method in this field ; the 
three distinct procedures and the thence resulting groups of sciences ; 
the sources, proximate and remote ; the personal equipment required ; 
the chief auxiliary sciences; the attractiveness, utility, and perils of the 
study. 

2. The Religious Phenomena of the World Historically Considered. His- 

tory of Religions and of Religion. 

In this course the aim is to make the student acquainted with the best 
methods and means for thorough study of the history of the important 
particular religions, the history of features or movements common to a 
class of religions, and, finally, the history of matters common to all re- 
ligions, or the history of religion universally considered. 

3. The Religious Phenomena of the World Systematically Considered. 

Descriptive Exposition of Religions and of Religion. 

Here the aim is to acquaint the student with the best means and meth- 
ods for ascertaining and descriptively setting forth in logical connection 
the facts presented by any particular religion, or by the features or move- 
ments that may be common to any class of religions, or by the total pres- 
ent state of religion universally considered. 



PREFACE xi 

4. The Philosophy of Religion. The Religious Phenomena of the World 
Philosophically Considered. 

An introduction treats of the aim and possibility of a philosophy of 
religion ; the relation of the philosophy of religion to other branches of 
philosophy; its relation to the history and to the systematic exposition 
of religions ; the history, literature, and present state of the philosophy of 
religion ; the different fundamental standpoints and postulates of different 
philosophies of religion ; and the plan and method demanded by the pres- 
ent state of religious knowledge and present currents of thought and life. 
After this follows in three "divisions" an outline of the total field. 

Parallel to these four courses runs a continuous study, at once historic, 
systematic, and philosophic, of the more important religions of the past 
and present, such as the Chaldseo-Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Chinese, 
and the chief of the Indo-European. This is conducted by means of 
assigned questions upon recommended readings, and by essays prepared 
by each student on assigned themes. The four courses are thus vitally 
and logically unified, and they can be taken only in their due sequence 
and as one whole. 

My habit has been to have the printed matter contained in 
the following pages bound up with about fifty blank leaves of 
writing paper for the use of the student. The first thirty of 
the blank pages have been reserved for "Notes and Queries 
Illustrative of the Text." These notes and queries have been 
revised and varied every year, the constant aim being to draw 
attention to the latest and best material. Then have followed, 
under the heading, "Collateral Reading and Study," a printed 
list of the books, essays, and portions of books particularly 
recommended for immediate use ; also a larger list of "Books 
to be Consulted," and one of "Periodicals to be Consulted." 
The next four pages have been filled with more than three- 
score of carefully formulated "Specimen Topics for Class 
Papers," the fundamental purpose of which has been, not to 
provide themes for actual use by the student, but to illustrate 
the wealth of material available and the varieties of method pos- 
sible in the preparation of papers of this kind. 



xii PREFACE 

Next have followed what I have called "Specimen Studies." 
These have consisted partly of dictated expositions, but more 
largely of dictated questions to be investigated and answered 
by the student. The space left after each question has indi- 
cated the fullness or brevity desired in the answer. The first 
two of these specimen studies have been devoted to two specially 
important historic forms of ethnic religion, and the method 
pursued has been commended to the student for use in his more 
private study of the other religions. One study has been given 
to the religious statistics of the world, and usually one to the 
curious conceptions of the heavens, earths, and underworlds 
found in the various systems of religious teaching. The philos- 
ophy of religion universally and comparatively considered, in- 
cluding the psychology of religion, has furnished other themes 
in embarrassing abundance. 

The "Fortnightly Reports," provided for and rendered con- 
venient by the blanks inserted at the end of the book, have 
served an excellent purpose in keeping the instructor in close 
touch with the problems and the progress of each student. 
Moreover, the reports, taken in connection with the written 
work in the books of the class, have afforded important aid in 
determining at the end of the year the standing individually 
earned by the several class members. 

To illustrate the variety of procedure and of style which may 
be employed by a teacher using this Outline, I include in an 
Appendix three selections from material used the past year, to 
wit : an exposition of the "Nature and Naturalness of Religion," 
a lecture on "A Quest of the Perfect Religion," and a question- 
naire on "Ancient Conceptions of the Universe." 

The standpoint of the present work is frankly that of Christian 
theism. The author can conceive of none higher, deeper, or 
more scientific. This being the case, it would be an unworthy 



PREFACE xiii 

affectation were he to profess to write without personal prepos- 
sessions or personal convictions. 

Former students have repeatedly urged me to prepare a more 
comprehensive work, one which should embody the facts, prin- 
ciples, inductions, and bibliographic helps needed by the average 
collegiate or theological student in this important field. I have 
steadily declined on the ground that no man could do justice to 
the ideal of such a work, and, further, that, even if anyone 
could, a very few months would render the bibliographic por- 
tions of the treatise obsolete, so rapid is the progress in this 
department of study. The most that has seemed to me to be 
attainable at the present time is a comprehensive outline, like 
the one here attempted, one which collegiate and theological 
professors charged with the duty of giving instruction in Theism, 
or Comparative Religion, or the Philosophy of Religion, can 
use as a time-saving device in explaining to neophytes the genesis 
and scope of the branch of instruction engaging their immediate 
attention, and especially its proper place in the one organism 
which includes and integrates all as yet defined and elaborated 
sciences relating to religion. 

In closing this preface I may mention one further hope which 
I have ventured to indulge. In connection with our State univer- 
sities, agricultural colleges, professional and military academies, 
and even with the educational department of many Young Men's 
Christian Associations, hundreds of students annually unite in 
volunteer classes and clubs for the study of missionary and other 
literature of a religious character. Often embarrassment is 
experienced in finding for these students a textbook adapted 
to take them forward and upward from the more elementary 
and fragmentary courses at first pursued, and especially one 
adapted to give them a "mountain-top outlook" over all the prov- 
inces of religious study. It will greatly gratify the present 
writer if experiment shall prove that a season spent upon this 



XIV 



PREFACE 



Outline, supplemented by readings in Principal Grant's little 
book on "The Religions of the World," gives to classes of this 
kind a comprehensiveness of vision hitherto lacking, and the 
truer insight which comes from breadth and accuracy of survey. 
The average student volunteer for missionary service could 
hardly fail to find in such a course many a needed correction 
of inherited misconceptions touching the non-Christian world, 
and touching its searchings after the Perfect Religion. 

W. F. W. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION 



CHAPTER I 
The Subject-AIatter of the Study 

The world is full of phenomena which men call religious. 
They are partly subjective and partly objective. They include 
personal beliefs, emotions, acts ; social customs, institutions, rites. 
They are at least as old as recorded history, as universal as the 
sense of moral obligation. Of all elements of human experience 
they are the deepest and the highest, the most interesting, the most 
sacred. As such they claim the studious attention of all thought- 
ful persons, whether they hold to one religion, or to another, or 
to none. 

To define religious phenomena more narrowly we must define 
religion. This in its highest sense is the normal bearing of men 
in and toward God, the ground of all finite existence. In a wider 
sense it includes all actual or historic endeavors after such a 
bearing, however far short of the ideal they may have come. It 
is in this wider sense that the term must ordinarily be used in the 
present course. Accordingly, the phenomena of religion must be 
understood to include all manifestations of man's religious nature, 
however high and however low. Wherever there is an attempted 
personal bearing over against what is believed to be divine, there 
some of the phenomena of religion will be found. 

Surveying more closely the religious phenomena of the world 
as thus defined, we shall quickly discover that they are not unre- 
lated and connectionless, a mere chaos of isolated facts, unorgan- 
ized and unorganizable. On the contrary, they tend to group, 



2 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

and do group themselves into distinct systems of religious belief 
and life. So far as these are systems of belief merely, they consti- 
tute what may be called theoretical or speculative systems ; so 
far, on the other hand, as they are systems of tribal, or national, 
or voluntarily associated life, they may be styled historic or 
concrete. 

The chief of the former or speculative class are Monotheism, 
Dualism, Polytheism, Atheism, and Pantheism. 

The chief of the historic or concrete systems now existing in 
the world are: 

I. The religions of the barbaric tribes. 
IL The religions of peoples that are emerging from an obsolete 
civilization ; such as the Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, Tibetans, 
Burmese, and Siamese. Here are found Confucianism, Shinto- 
ism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, the last named in its various 
national and sectarian forms. 

HI. That rightly named, though as yet far from perfectly 
actualized, World-Religion, which, beginning with man's begin- 
ning, and unfolding as the world-compassing divine purposes suc- 
cessively unfold, reaches its first culmination and interpretation 
in the theanthropic person, teachings, and world-redeeming work 
of Jesus Christ. This is the religion of the most highly civilized 
peoples of the globe. Modern Judaism is simply the survival of 
an outgrown form of it; Islamism, an abnormal reversionary 
variation due to inadequate instruction and leadership at the time 
when the gospel first reached Arabia. 

The question. Whence all these religions, and the successive 
forms through which they have passed? deserves attention. The 
problem is a profound one, for the forces by whose action and 
interaction particular religious systems are produced, maintained, 
and perpetually modified are among the most subtile and complex 
known to human investigation. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 3 

Five fundamental facts, however, go far toward explaining 
in a general way the origin and the successive modifications of 
all particular religions. 

First. Men universally, and it would seem instinctively, mani- 
fest a religious activity of some kind. 

Second. Under the partly conscious, partly unconscious in- 
fluence of reason, this religious activity ever tends to come into 
some degree of conformity with a strictly consistent life-theory 
and world-theory of some sort — it may be monotheistic, dualistic, 
polytheistic, pantheistic, or even atheistic. Hence arise specula- 
tive or abstract religious systems corresponding to these various 
conceptions of man and of the universe. 

Third. Like other universal activities, the religious is affected 
bv social influences. Of necessitv it enters into the social life 
of bodies of men, constitutes a factor in the development of that 
life, conditions in great measure its quality, and is in turn condi- 
tioned by it. Hence originate concrete or historic systems of 
religion, reflecting and in some measure determining the genius 
of a particular people or of a particular religious society. 

Fourth. The interrelation between the life and the religion of 
a man, or of an aggregate of men, is so intricate and vital that 
the religion cannot be changed without changing the life ; nor, 
on the other hand, can the life be changed without changing the 
religion. Hence, all profound changes in the pursuits, tastes, 
or states of culture of a people are preceded, accompanied, or fol- 
lowed by noteworthy modifications, if not real transformations, 
of religious belief and life. 

Fifth. The theistic world-view cannot maintain itself, or even 
complete itself, without postulating on the part of the World- 
Author and World-Administrator a self-revealing and self-com- 
municating activity, world-wide and world-old, like that histor- 
ically exemplified in the World-Religion. In the view of every 
true theist, therefore, this divine activity is the most fundamental 



4 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

and significant factor in every religion, as manifest in the decay 
and fall of systems as in their rise and growth. Man's search 
after God is but the consequence of God's antecedent and inces- 
sant quest of man. 

In concluding this prehminary glance at the subject-matter of 
our study, it is well to remind ourselves of the immense number 
and variety of facts and principles included therein. They are 
found not in one department of human life merely, but in all. 
Illustrations of the power and influence of religion in the domestic 
sphere could be drawn from the history of every people. So, also, 
from social and civil life ; from the realm of education ; from the 
domain of art ; from the field of literature ; and from the great 
world of popular customs. With such matters volumes upon 
volumes could be filled. Traverse whatever department of 
thought and action we will, we encounter the manifest and multi- 
form phenomena of religion. Whatever religion itself may be — 
something natural or supernatural, a dream or a reality, a lunacy 
or a sanity — its universal presence and power in humanity and in 
humanity's history compel attention and demand investigation ac- 
cording to the strictest and most thorough methods of scientific 
study. 



CHAPTER II 



The Admissibility of the Scientific Treatment of the 
Religious Phenomena of the World 

The practicability and propriety of investigating and setting 
forth the religious phenomena of the world in accordance with 
what is called the scientific method would at first thought seem 
to be as much beyond question as the like procedure in the case 
of any other phenomena of a mental, social, or ethical character. 
But since the admissibility of the application of the scientific 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 5 

method to religion has been repeatedly and earnestly challenged., 
and this from very different points of view, it becomes necessary 
here at the threshold of the study to examine and test the objec- 
tions urged. But, first, what is meant by the term, *'the scien- 
tific method" ? 

As here used it designates and includes : 

First. That procedure by which the mind carefully, critically, 
and repeatedly observes a group of phenomena, and so comes to 
know their exact character and normal order of succession. 

Second. That procedure by which the mind reaches verifiable 
or otherwise rationally satisfactory conclusions touching the 
cause or causes of said phenomena, the conditions under which, 
and the laws according to which, these causes act. 

Third. That procedure by which the mind reaches verifiable 
or otherwise rationally satisfactory conclusions touchino;- the con- 
nections and correlations of these phenomena with others, and of 
their causes with other causes, and the true purpose and signifi- 
cance of said correlations. 

It has often been said that the scientific method has no pre- 
suppositions. How untrue is this declaration the most super- 
ficial glance at any adequate definition of it suffices to show. 
Even in the hands of a materialist the scientific method rests upon 
at least three immense postulates : first, the absolute validity of 
the normal processes of human intelligence ; second, the unvary- 
ing constancy of natural law ; third, the rationality of the universe 
of being and of its workings as a whole. Deprive him of any one 
of these fundamental assumptions and at once any and every 
employment of the scientific method becomes impossible. 

Such being the nature and the presuppositions of this method 
in all its applications, it is evident that objections to its applica- 
tion to religion might antecedently be expected from several 
parties : 

First. From all those who question the validity of human knowl- 



6 • THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

edge in general ; in other words, the skeptical school of philosophy 
properly so called (Pyrrhonists). 

Second. From those who, admitting the validity of all knowl- 
edge acquired . by sense-perception, question or deny the possi- 
bility of any valid knowledge of the supersensuous. 

Third. From all those who, admitting the possibility of a valid 
knowledge of supersensuous objects and realities in the sphere of 
the finite — as, for example, in human consciousness — question or 
deny the possibility of any valid knowledge of that unconditional 
presupposition, ground, and unity demanded by the finite for its 
own explanation. 

To all of the above classes of objectors it is proper and suf- 
ficient to say that their quarrel is with the scientific method itself, 
or with its first assumption, not with the application of it to 
religious phenomena as such. 

But beyond the above-mentioned objectors stand two other 
classes of persons who question or deny the admissibility of a 
scientific treatment of religion. 

The first do this on the ground that in its essential nature 
religion ''transcends knowledge." It is an experience which in 
strictest literalness passeth all understanding. In its full and 
normal actualization it so fills and dominates the whole conscious- 
ness of its subject that the observant and critical and ratiocinative 
activities of the mind are necessarily and entirely excluded. The 
moment the soul attempts the scientific explanation of its religious 
experiences those experiences are already of necessity at an end, 
and there is nothing left for observation. (The most consistent and 
thoroughgoing representatives of this view maintain that the idea 
of God is innate, that in the intuitional faculties we possess an 
organ for immediate and conscious fellowship with God, jand that 
the exercise of reason, using this term as a designation of the 
discursive faculty, instead of helping us toward a knowledge of 
God and the true life in him, only hinders and distracts. 



i^^ 



^ 



^ 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 7 

The second class hold that normal religion necessarily presup- 
poses a supernatural communication of the mind and will of Him 
who is the true object of religious thought and worship; in other/ 
words, an authoritative didactic revelation from God. They affirm ^ 
that no study of the religious phenomena of the world, or of the 
phenomena of nature, could ever give us information as to God's 
nature, or character, or purposes concerning us, or as to our 
duties toward him. To supply this lack of light he has made 
and duly authenticated a plain revelation upon all these subjects; 
and possessing this, every attempt on our part to seek religious 
knowledge apart from it, or to adjust its teachings to those of 
fallible human reason, or even to support its doctrines by deduc- 
tions from religions which it disowns and condemns, is at once 
an impertinence and a folly. To these persons the only legitimate 
use of reason in religion is reverently and unquestioningly to 
accept the prima facie teaching of the authoritative Didactic 
Revelation. 

To both classes it might be replied that, granting their respec- 
tive tenets, or either one of them, we have already therein a 
most important and fundamental contribution to a philosophy of 
religion, and that every philosophy of religion necessarily pre- 
supposes and rests upon a scientific study of the phenomena of 
religion. Indeed, without such a study, and a logical use of 
the results of such a study, neither the mystic can show the 
transcendence of religion in its relation to knowledge, nor the 
revelationist the existence and exclusive claims of his revelation. 
The characteristic view of each is, therefore, inconsistent with 
itself and self-destructive. 

Again, to both of these parties it may be replied, that they mis- 
apprehend and misrepresent the scientific method and its 
assumptions. Both treat the question as if in the application of 
this method to the phenomena of religion there was no place for 
the exercise of any faculty other than the logical understanding. 



8 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

Especially does the mystic forget that that transcendent con- 
sciousness of divine communion which he so exalts is itself a 
mode of knowing as truly as of feeling, and, in fact, according 
to his own principles, the highest, most immediate, and perfect 
of all modes. In like manner the stickler for revelation forgets 
that no object or being is capable of being known save as it 
reveals or self-manifests itself to the cognizing subject; so that 
this necessity for self-manifestation is no more predicable of God 
than it is of man, or of those objects of which natural science 
treats. Both, therefore, misapprehend or ignore one or more of 
the primary postulates of the scientific method itself. 

Finally, it may be remarked that both parties mistake the true 
force and significance of the very considerations which they urge 
against the application of the scientific method to religious phe- 
nomena. These considerations, instead of producing in us a 
despair of attaining true conceptions of religion and of its psycho- 
logical and social laws and relations, ought only to remind us 
of the transcendent excellence and compass of that knowledge 
to whose acquisition we are summoned, and of the encouragement 
we ought to find in the essentially self-manifestative character 
of its divine Object. If beyond this they remind us of the dis- 
proportion of our present powers to such high tasks as those 
here contemplated, we may well reassure ourselves with the 
thought that all human science has its bounds and limitations, 
and that in the field of religious investigation, if anywhere, human 
infirmity may hope for divine guidance and help toward the truth. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 



CHAPTER III 

The Three Procedures and the Resulting Groups of 

Sciences 

In the scientific treatment of the religious phenomena of the 
world the three essential modes of procedure are : first, the 
Historic ; second, the Systematic ; and third, the Philosophic. 

Whoever pursues the first undertakes to set forth the genetic 
or chronological order of these phenomena in the origin and 
development of particular religious systems and groups, or in 
the history of religion universally considered. Whoever pursues 
the second undertakes to set forth religious phenomena in their 
logical relations as constituent elements of systems more or less 
inclusive. Whoever pursues the third undertakes from a careful 
study of the facts of religion and of its history to ascertain and 
to set forth the essential nature of religion, its origin, its psycho- 
logical and other presuppositions, the laws of its individual and 
social development, its subjective and objective validity. 

The man who adopts the historic procedure may limit himself 
to single religions ; or he may trace comparatively or otherwise 
the rise and history of developments common to a group of 
religions ; or, finally, he may seek to include the whole field. In 
the first case he elaborates histories of single religions ; in the 
second, comparative or other histories of wider religious move- 
ments or of peculiarities of such movements ; in the third, a uni- 
versal history of religion. 

In like manner the man who adopts the systematic procedure 
may undertake to deal with the phenomena presented by a single 
religious system ; or with those pertaining to a class of religions ; 
or, finally, with those which are common to all. In the first case 



10 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

he gives us the phenomenology of a particular religion ; in the 
second, that of a chosen group ; in the third, that of religion uni- 
versally considered. This term "phenomenology," signifying the 
definition, classification, and scientific presentation of the data 
found by the investigator in any selected field, is peculiarly fitted 
for use in this connection. 

All sciences, therefore, which relate to the phenomena of reli- 
gion may be classified as follows : 

I. The Historic Group. 

1. Histories of particular Religions. 

2. Histories, comparative or other, of wider religious 

movements, or of special features common to a class 
of religions. 

3. The Universal History of Religion, or the History of 

Religion universally considered. 

11. The Systematic Group. 

1. The Phenomenology of particular Religions. 

2. The Phenomenology of a chosen group of Religions, 

as, for example, the Indo-Germanic. 

3. The Phenomenology of Religion universally considered. 

ni. The Philosophical Group. 

1. The Philosophy of the Object of Religion. 

2. The Philosophy of the Subject of Religion. 

3. The Philosophy of the past, present, and future Inter- 

relations of the Subject and Object of Religion. 

From the foregoing conspectus, it is evident that the term "the 
Science of Religion" can no longer be used without great vague- 
ness and ambiguity. Once investigators thought to construct a 
"Science of Life," but before they had completed a preliminary 
survey of the data they found they had built up the whole hier- 
archy of what are now called the biological sciences, So half a 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION ii 

thousand years ago there was a body of systematized facts and 
truths that might well enough have been styled "the Science of 
Christianity" ; since that time, however, the progress of scholar- 
ship has substituted for that one unitary presentation about a 
score of recognized theological sciences, each highly organized 
and reasonably comprehensive. In like manner the so-called 
Science of Religion is fast giving place, not merely to a group of 
new religious sciences, but even to a group made up of sub- 
groups, as just shown. 

The term "the Science of Religion," as used since its introduction some 
years ago, has never been quite free from ambiguity. Sometimes it has 
sharply excluded almost everything pertaining to the philosophy of 
religion, while in other cases it has been used as wholly inclusive of that 
department of the study. German writers have done no better. Religions- 
zi'issenschaft (the Science of Religion) and Religions philosophie (the 
Philosophy of Religion) have been alternately differentiated and alter- 
nately interchanged, until no reader feels the least assurance of the mean- 
ing in a given case until he examines the context. Even Religionsge- 
schichtc (the History of Religion) is so vaguely used that the translator 
of De la Saussaye's Manual of the History of Religion gives as the 
English equivalent, "Science of Religion." Neither title well fits the con- 
tents of the book, but, as between the two, that chosen by the author would 
seem the more appropriate. Following such examples, Professor ]\Ienzies. 
not only uses the term "History of Religion" as synonymous with 
"Science of Religion," but even seems to defend such a confusing usage. 
("History of Religion," London and New York, 1895, pp. 2, 3.) 

The above grouping of the new sciences now rapidly coming to recog- 
nition further shows the infelicitous character of another term often 
applied to this field of study ; to wit, "Comparative Religion," or, worse 
yet, "Comparative Religions." This originated by contraction from the 
phrase, "the Comparative Study of Religions." Louis Henry Jordan, 
author of our most important treatise bearing the name, admits the in- 
felicity of the designation, but adopts it as the best now attainable (vol. i, 
pp. 24-28). As used by him it covers but a limited portion of the general 
field. The science he so ably represents he explicitly distinguishes from 
"The History of Religions" on the one hand, and from "The Philosophy 
of Religion" on the other ; holding that the former should precede, and 



12 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

the latter follow it (pp. 9-12). His defined field for "Comparative Reli- 
gion" is, therefore, within that covered by "The Systematic Group" in 
our classification above. On pp. 68-71, however, he seems to claim for 
it lines of investigation to which the historian of particular religions would 
appear to possess a prior claim. 



CHAPTER IV 

Sources for the Scientific Study of the Religious 
Phenomena of the World 

The sources from which the student of religions chiefly draws 
his information may be divided into two general classes: 

L The Proximate. 

IL The Remoter. 

The former consists mainly of the treatises which authors more 
or less competent have written in elucidation of the different 
religions and of their history. Of the latter, the following arc 
more important : 

1. The epigraphical and monumental. 

2. The hagiographical, or that found in the sacred books of 
different religions. 

3. The legendary and mythological. 

4. The incidental or collateral. 

In many cases several or all of these sources are available. 
Thus, for exainple, if we wish to investigate the Egyptian con- 
ception of a future life, we have (i) monumental inscriptions 
and mural decorations which illustrate it. We have (2) in the 
Funereal Ritual, or so-called Book of the Dead, an extremely 
valuable hagiographical source of information. Then (3) there 
are important myths and legends to be examined; and (4) as 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 13 

incidental or collateral sources, the statements of early Greek 
travelers who visited the country, etc. 

On the other hand, in many cases we are shut up to a single 
source, and often to one of the least definite and trustworthy of 
all. Thus, for example, if our problem were to ascertain what 
views of the future life were held by the ancient Massagetse, we 
should be restricted to the fourth variety of remoter sources, if 
indeed we could find any whatsoever. 

All these sources must be used with the utmost care if we 
would not be led astray. Where more than one is available, the 
yield of each should be supplemented, corrected, or confirmed, as 
the case may be, by the yield of each of the others. In this task, 
unwearying patience, rare historic insight, and the utmost breadth 
of scholarship are exigently demanded. 

Especially difficult is the utilizing of the mythological sources ; 
for while some myths may suggest historic facts in forms not too 
poetical to be beyond trustworthy interpretation, these consti- 
tute but the smallest fraction of the mass which must be studied. 
In this mass are innumerable myths of mere spontaneous story- 
telling; those of an imaginative etymology; those of a fanciful 
natural philosophy and natural history ; those of a more or less 
conscious didactic aim ; those of a distinctly conscious affectation 
of archaic ideas and modes of expression. To detect the exact 
character of each, or even its exact value or its valuelessness to 
the student of religions, is one of the most arduous if not the 
most hopeless of tasks. 

Both of the above-named general classes of sources are con- 
stantly becoming richer and more copious. The progress of 
archaeological exploration in ancient seats of civilization, the ad- 
vance of general and special ethnography, the constantly increas- 
ing attention to Oriental and other literatures and to folklore, 
are steadily enlarging and otherwise improving each variety of 
the remoter sources ; while living writers, availing themselves 



14 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

of this new knowledge, are producing more and more trustworthy 
treatises entitled to rank as enlargements and improvements of 
those sources of our study which we have styled the proximate. 



CHAPTER V 
Personal Equipment for the Study of Religions 

In order that a student of the world's religions may be quali- 
fied to use with any freedom and thoroughness even those sources 
which in the last chapter we styled proximate, it is indispensable 
that he have a good working knowledge of at least five languages : 
the Greek, Latin, German, French, and English. The literatures 
of all these languages should be readily accessible for each and 
every investigation he may have occasion to make. 

For the full utilizing of the remoter sources no human knowl- 
edge is superfluous. The requisites here are so vast that no one 
man can dream of acquiring them all. In some of these investi- 
gations the key to a right solution of the problem is as likely as 
not to be found only in some quite out-of-the-way field of knowl- 
edge, such as ancient heraldry, astrology, alchemy, metrology. 
Lenormant made his rare knowledge and skill in numismatics of 
service to the study of religion. In the study of ancient mythol- 
ogies, a knowledge of seals, intaglios, and cameos is of great 
importance ; in fine, the full employment of our sources calls for 
the patient cooperation of vast numbers of specialists in every 
department of learning. Even with this cooperation, the time 
can never come when we can be confident that the monuments, 
and traditions, and languages of antiquity have no new secret to 
yield up to skillful investigation. 

If these remarks be true it is plain that there can be no exact 
enumeration of the particular sciences which are, or should be, 
preliminary to the study of religions. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 15 



CHAPTER VI 

Auxiliary Sciences 

Much the same must be said of any attempt to name the 
sciences properly auxiliary to our study. There is no science 
which in one way or another is not tributary and helpful to this 
line of investigation. As there is nothing in the universe which 
does not come within the circle of religious ideas and interests, 
there can be no body of scientific truths destitute of significance 
for the study of religions. If, however, one inquires for a list of 
those sciences from whose progress our study in its present state 
has most to hope, at least the following would have to be included : 

I. General Anthropology and Ethnology. 

II. Psychology, Personal and Ethnic {Volkerpsychologie). 

III. The Science of Language and Comparative Philology. 

IV. Moral Philosophy and Comparative Ethics. 

V. Political Philosophy and Comparative Jurisprudence. 

\l. The History of Art and Comparative Esthetics. 

\ll. The History of Human Culture and the Comparative 

Study of Civilizations. 

\'III. Universal History and the Philosophy of History. 

IX. Geography of Races, Civilizations and Religions. 

X. General Sociology. 

The relations which these various branches sustain to each 
other, and the exact ground which each should cover, are not 
as yet in all cases well defined ; but the progress of any one of 
them, however defined, is helpful to the study of religions. 



i6- THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 



CHAPTER VII 

The Attractiveness, the Utility, and the Perils of 
THE Study of Religions 

To the thoughtful mind whatever is human has irnperishable 
interest and attraction. Be it but a bit of drifting folklore ; be it 
but a barbarous rite ; be it a peculiarity of speech, of government, 
or of social organization ; be it an achievement, an inspiration, a 
tradition, a myth, a parable, a discovery, an invention ; be it barely 
a fossil relic of some far-off geologic period — if it is only human, 
it is at once invested with a fascination altogether unlike that 
attaching to anything not expressive of personal life. But of 
all human aspirations the religious is the highest ; of all human 
traditions those of religion are the oldest ; of all human institu- 
tions those of religion are the most vital ; of all human aims and 
achievements in art, in literature, in music, in education, those of 
religion are the divinest. In the study of religion, therefore, the 
charm which the human has for the humanist and for humanity 
is at its maximum. 

But beyond and above the human lies the superhuman. And 
it is to the realm of the superhuman ; to the heavens and hells 
of humanity ; to the worlds invisible and worlds yet to come ; to 
orders of beings immaterial ; to disembodied spirits, angels, arch- 
angels, rulers of celestial spheres, divinities in human and other 
forms, demigods; to the Supreme and Eternal One, who alone 
can say, 'T am and by me all subsist" — it is to this realm 
that the study of religions introduces us. Hence, as long as the 
hidden future either attracts or terrifies men, as long as the 
mystery of the unseen piques the curiosity of human cjuestioners, 
as long as the superhuman origin, ground, and destination of the 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 17 

world and of humanity have fascination for human thought, so 
long must the study of the phenomena of religion have fascinat- 
ing interest for men. 

Again, at the present time the study has the charm of wonder- 
ful freshness and novelty. In our generation a greater progress 
has been made in this field of investigation than in any preceding 
one. The vast literatures of the great ethnic religions of Asia 
are for the first time undergoing exploration. The unearthed 
cities and shrines of ancient empires are daily yielding precious 
secrets. Through the gates of unlocked hieroglyphics we are 
conducted into ancient worlds and civilizations whose very 
memory had perished. Meantime the pioneers of the Christian 
missions and of commerce are penetrating into the inmost recesses 
of the last retreats of barbarism, and disclosing for comparative 
study the superstitions and the customs and the cults of those 
respecting whom recorded history could give us no knowledge. 
Till now the materials for an all-comprehending and therefore 
truly scientific study of the religion have been lacking. Even at 
present its vast sources are just opened. All the greater, of 
course, are the zeal, the enthusiasm, the success of the workers 
who are constantly bringing new materials to light. All the 
greater, too, is the zest with which constructive scholarship is 
giving itself to the task of mastering the vast results of individual 
specialists in archaeology, philology, ethnology, etc., and of organ- 
izing them into the new special, comparative, and universal 
sciences of religion, which as yet have scarcely been named and 
defined. 

Of the utility of the study of one's own religion, whichever it 
may be, it is not necessary to speak. Every intelligent and 
thoughtful man feels it to be of practical importance to know the 
truth respecting the origin and history of the religious community 
with which by birth or public profession he is associated. With- 
out intelligent personal convictions respecting the propriety of 



i8 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

the claims which his religion makes upon him, he cannot satis- 
factorily meet those claims. But without a study of the system, 
and of the duties which it inculcates, and of the grounds on 
which it bases those duties, he cannot have the requisite personal 
convictions. Hence, among every people and sect a study of 
the inherited religion is esteemed essential to an intelligent and 
well-supported practice of the duties it inculcates. 

As respects ourselves, who are representatives of the World- 
Religion in its Christian stage, the. advantages accruing from the 
study of the non-Christian systems along with our own, and 
from the study of all religious phenomena, historically, system- 
atically, and philosophically, are almost numberless. A few of 
the more obvious and direct are the following: 

1. Such study must tend to guard one against that narrowness 
and uncharitableness of judgment, that caste-pride and self- 
righteousness, into which all ignorant religionists are sure to fall. 

2. More than almost any study, it must throw light upon the 
nature of man ; upon his relation to other beings ; upon the law 
and end and meaning of history ; upon the relation of the finite 
to the infinite. In fine, there is scarcely a problem of anthropology, 
ethnology, sociology, cosmology, theology, or ontology toward 
whose solution the thorough and scientific investigation of the 
religious phenomena of the world will not contribute. 

3. The great literary and artistic creations of the world are 
so inseparably connected with religious ideas, inspirations, and 
achievements that, without familiarity with these, the Iliad and 
the Mahabharata, the Serapseum and the Parthenon, Apollo Bel- 
vedere and the oratorio of the Messiah, are entirely unintelli- 
gible. The study of religion and of its history is, therefore, a 
fundamental and essential element in any truly liberal and polite 
education. 

4. If Christianity is mistaken and arrogant in its claims and 
expectations, if it is only one of many religions, all of merely 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION ig 

human origin, it surely is in the interest of truth and genuine 
progress that this fact be shown. On the other hand, if Chris- 
tianity furnishes the only key to human history and destiny, the 
sooner and the wider and the more convincingly this can be 
proven the better. But for the investigating and arguing of this 
question on either side a wide knowledge of the religions of the 
world and of their history has now become indispensable. 

5. Finally, to those who, by settled convictions of its truth, and 
by public profession of its life, and by official authorization of 
its professors, are public expounders and teachers and defenders 
of Christianity, a wide and constantly increasing acquaintance 
with the religious phenomena of the world is of incalculable ad- 
vantage : partly by affording a world of varied and apposite illus- 
tration such as a public teacher needs ; partly by the new light 
which it sheds upon Bible history and Bible doctrine ; partly by 
reason of the ability it gives to expose the ignorance of dabblers 
and babblers ; and, finally, by reason of the fresh and ever more 
perfect insight it gives into the essence of the true religion, and 
into the identity of ideal Christianity with ideal religion. 

But while so great utility must be claimed for our study, it 
cannot be denied that to the beginner it presents somewhat of 
peril. In every case the student approaches the investigation with 
religious, if not also with speculative, and national, and racial 
prepossessions. So much more intimate and sympathetic has been 
his relation to one of the religions of the world than to the others 
that it becomes one of the most difficult of tasks for him, in study- 
ing other systems, to place himself in every case at the point of 
view of those who have been born and reared in them. And 
just in proportion to the difficulty of doing this is there danger 
lest he do less than justice to the alien systems, even if he does 
not do more than justice to his own. 

Again, every marked widening of intellectual vision caused by 
new knowledge necessitates new adjustments of knowledge to 



20 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

faith and of faith to knowledge. And every attempt to effect 
a thus necessitated new adjustment involves something of peril 
to one's faith, whether that faith be true or false. In cases where 
it is false the increase of knowledge must, slowly it may be, yet 
surely, destroy it. But even where one's religious conviction is 
essentially true and well founded it may be sorely imperiled, and, 
in particular individuals, is doubtless often destroyed by the force 
of that natural reaction which the mind experiences on discover- 
ing the inadequacy of early and outgrown expressions of its faith. 
For example, when the Christian student comes for the first time 
to investigate, in a scientific spirit, the different religions of the 
world ; to compare and contrast the Christian with other religious 
systems ; to face for the first time the impressive thought that 
even upon his own principles the providential government of the 
world must in some way have included and utilized all ethnic 
religions ; that therefore, somehow, they must all have had a 
place and a significance in the divine plan, his mind is apt to 
experience a kind of bewilderment. The new horizon is so much 
broader than the accustomed one that he is in danger of entirely 
losing sight of the old and familiar landmarks. Upon a naturally 
narrow, conceited, and ill-balanced mind the effect, in many cases, 
is to induce a reactionary contempt for its earlier faith and a total 
rejection of the Christian world-view. Upon a broader, deeper, 
and more penetrating intelligence the effect is quite the reverse. 
The height and depth and length and breadth of God's kingdom 
are seen in a light never dreamed of before. Now for the first 
time does Christianity become the true World-Religion, the ex- 
planation of all history, the prophecy of a yet-to-be-consummated 
ethnic and cosmic unity. 



BOOK FIRST 



The Religious Phenomena of the World Historically 

Considered 



Introduction to the Book. 

Division I. History of Particular Religions. 

Division H. History of Developments Common to Several 
Particular Religions. 

Division HI. History of Developments Common to All 
Religions. 



INTRODUCTION 



In chapter third of the General Introduction we saw that the 
historic method of investigation and representation might be 
apphed : 

1. To particular religions, ethnic or other; or 

2. To historic features, tendencies, or developments common 
to a class of religions ; or 

3. To the religious life of mankind as a whole. 

The first of these applications gives us the History of Reli- 
gions individually considered ; the second, the History of Groups 
of Religions comparatively or otherwise considered ; the third, the 
History of Religion universally considered. 

In each of these lines of work we have as yet only tentative and unsatis- 
factory beginnings. In the opening section of his "History of Religion" 
(London and Boston, 1877), Professor Tiele has defined the first and last 
of the above applications, but somewhat strangely omitted any recognition 
of the second. Professor J. C. Moffat, of Princeton, in his "Comparative 
History of Religions" (New York, 1871), nowhere defines what he 
conceives to be the proper aim or field of the branch of history whose 
name he employs. The work to which he applies it is a contribution, not so 
much to the Comparative History of Religions properly so called, as to 
the History of Religion universally considered. Even the "History of 
Religion," by Professor Menzies, makes no distinction whatever between 
the historic, the systematic, and the philosophic procedures in this field of 
study. 

Historical investigation can promise no useful result imless 
based upon a correct idea of history itself, and especially of its 

23 



24 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

essential factors and laws. For example, if human freedom be a 
reality, human developments must be radically different from all 
developments below the human sphere. Each class must be inter- 
preted in the light of that difference. Again, if superhuman or 
subhuman personalities exist, and have at any time, in any place, 
or in any degree affected human thought, feeling, or action, these 
extra-human personalities constitute a factor in the development 
of the race — a factor without reference to which the race's history 
can never be rightly conceived of or represented. One of the 
first and fundamental duties, therefore, of any author professing 
to set forth the history of a religion, or of a movement belong- 
ing to several religions, or of religion universally considered, is 
to define his standpoint with respect to man's freedom or unfree- 
dom, and with respect to the adequacy or inadequacy of human 
agency taken alone to account for the phenomena under investi- 
gation. Furthermore, having clearly and frankly defined it, it is, 
of course, his duty to remain true to it throughout his entire 
treatment of the facts considered. 

The scientific and philosophic vindication of the standpoint 
adopted by any historian of religion must be found partly in the 
degree of perfection with which it corresponds to the facts in 
hand, and partly in its relation to the outcome of the Philosophy 
of Religion in general. So far as a priori considerations are con- 
cerned, if the materialist or agnostic claims that by the logical 
law of parsimony we are estopped from postulating superhuman 
factors in any domain of human history until it has been demon- 
strated beyond dispute that the human ones cannot possibly ex- 
plain the facts, the theist, and even the pantheist, may, on the 
other hand, with equal propriety affirm that to approach the 
study of religions with an a priori denial of the existence and 
possible influence of superhuman beings is as unreasonable as 
it would be to approach the study of the flora of the earth with 
a sturdy determination not to admit the existence of super- 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 25 

floral light and air and the possible influence of superfloral flori- 
culturists. 

As all human history is a process of constructive or destruc- 
tive development, the history of religions and of religion partakes 
of this character. However abrupt, radical, and revolutionary 
some of the changes of the religious world may at first sight ap- 
pear, there is never an entire break with the past. As the reli- 
gious life of the man, the community, the race, goes forward, new 
factors are continually taking their places in it ; new social and 
spiritual and other environments are constantly coming to affect 
it; yet it is the same man, the same people, the same race whose 
life is thus proceeding from phase to phase. In the subject of 
each religious development resides a continuity of being. In its 
life, as in all vital processes, the immediate past conditions the 
possibilities of the present ; the present, the possibilities of the 
immediate future. 

In order rightly to conceive of any evolution, care must be taken 
to obtain a correct conception, first, of the subject; and, secondly, 
of the environment. 

This being the case, it is evident that in developments in any 
wise related to man it is hardly possible to give too much atten- 
tion to the element of personality in both subject and environment. 
The development of bodily strength and aptitude attained by the 
athlete can never be understood without particular attention to 
the personal purpose and personal resolution by which he has held 
himself to faithful and prolonged training. So the evolution of 
a thorn-bearing tree into a pear-bearing one requires, for its 
right understanding, a knowledge of the power of a skillful 
grafter ; in other words, requires that the influence of a personal, 
and to it supernatural, environment shall be taken into account. 
Hence, in studying a religious evolution, equal care must be taken, 
on the one hand, that the personal power of self-determination 
belonging to each man be not overlooked, and, on the other 



26 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

hand, that due account be taken of the influences that may come 
from the other personal powers, human or extra-human, which 
help to make up each man's environment. 

In investigating and setting forth the history of religion uni- 
versally considered, nothing can be more unscientific than to 
ignore the chronological order of the different particular religions 
as they were actually related to the life of the world, substituting 
therefor a purely arbitrary one, based upon supposed degrees of 
comparative simplicity, or comparative complexness, or like prin- 
ciples of classification. Tide's arrangement of the different sys- 
tems, according to which the student is introduced to the religion 
of the American Cherokee and Eskimo before he is to the reli- 
gions of ancient Chaldaea, Egypt, or Phoenicia, and to German 
mythology before he is to the Greek, is a conspicuous example 
of the fault here alluded to. In the work of Professor Menzies 
the order is open to the same criticism : Islam is presented before 
Christianity, and Primitive Semitic religion long after the religion 
of the Assyrians. 

The question as to the earliest form of religion is at the present 
day so complicated with other questions that the proper place for 
its discussion is in the Philosophy of Religion, where in due time 
it will come before us. Suffice it here to say that, according to 
the oldest traditions of the oldest peoples, not less than according 
to the sacred records of the Hebrew, Mohammedan, and Christian 
world, men were in the beginning blessed with divine fellowship 
and favor, and only after losing this fellowship became what they 
now are. The considerations ordinarily adduced to disprove an 
original state of innocence are far from convincing. Most of 
them would equally avail to disprove every phase or stage of 
human evolution that has not been in the line of direct progress 
toward greater and greater perfection. 

In Illingworth's "Personality, Human and Divine," Chapter 
VI, may be found an eminently fair-minded consideration of the 



AND THE \V0RLD-RELIG10x\ 27 

problems connected with the prehistoric beginnings of the reli- 
gious life of mankind. The next ensuing chapter of the same 
work continues the discussion in a way helpful to the beginner 
in studies of this nature. 



DIVISION FIRST 

The History of Particular Religions 

The most natural order in which to treat of the history of the 
leading religions of the past and present is according to the three 
following groups : 

I. The religions known to the Ancient World. 
II. Those known to the ]\Iediaeval World. 
III. Those with which modern discovery and exploration have 
made us acquainted. 

It is a special recommendation of this order that, better than 
any other, it enables the student fruitfully to combine the study 
of particular religions, and of groups of religions historically re- 
lated, with the study of the history of religion universally consid- 
ered. This will become more and more evident the farther the 
investigator advances. We may, therefore, proceed to the ques- 
tion, What are the important religions in each of these groups, 
and to what point has the scientific study of their history at- 
tained ? 

Part I. History of (he Principal Religions Known to the 

Ancient World 

Here belong: (i) The religion of the ancient Babylonians and 
Assyrians, including that of their Akkado-Sumerian predecessors. 



28 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

(2) The religion of the ancient Egyptians. (3) The religion 
of the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Canaanites, and Pre-Islaniic 
Arabians. (4) The religion of the ancient Persians and Medo- 
Persians. (5) The religion of the Pelasgians and Greeks. (6) 
The religion of the Etruscans and Romans. (7) The religion 
which, at the close of the period, vitally and permanently sup- 
planted all the foregoing, to wit, the one which, by virtue of its 
contrast to all these local and national systems, is ever increas- 
ingly entitled to be called the World-Religion. 

The foregoing include all the important religions which were 
known to the ancient world, and which by their growths and 
decays, and by their mutual historic actions and reactions, made 
the ancient world religiously what it was. The religions of the 
Chinese and Indo-Aryans are quite possibly as old as those of 
Greece and Rome, but not having come in any influential sense, 
if at all, to the knowledge of the vitally associated nations of 
the ancient world, they do not belong to our present group. 
Their history can best be studied in connection with the third 
period — the period in which, coming out of their isolation, they 
first truly begin to bring their long accumulating contribution to 
universal history into effective relations with the total life of 
humanity. 

The ethnic religions of the above group have this in common : 
they are styled polytheistic. In entering upon the study of poly- 
theisms, however, two things should never be forgotten. First: 
A belief in the existence of such limited and originated beings 
as the so-called gods of the polytheist is not in the least incom- 
patible with a genuine belief in an unlimited and unoriginated 
Being back of and anterior to all these, a "God of gods," as Plato 
says — the real and Eternal Source of gods and of men. Poly- 
theism, therefore, and monotheism are no more mutually exclu- 
sive at bottom than are monotheism and a belief in archangels. In 
fact, the most elaborate system of totemism is compatible with a 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 29 

fundamentally monotheistic belief whenever — as is usually the 
case — the totemistic tribe conceives of its ancestral animal or 
plant as having originally received its being and destination from 
the hand of the "Great Spirit." Second: All peoples who explain 
the multiplicity of their "gods" by theogonic processes of emana- 
tion or generation must be assumed to have started with a pre- 
historic, or else self-postulated, monotheism. No theogony is 
complete and satisfying until it has conducted the mind back to 
a primeval and unengendered Progenitor of the total divine 
family. It is not strange, therefore, that in every historic poly- 
theism we find traces of monotheism, prehistoric or speculative, 
or both. The Babylonians had numberless gods, but they recog- 
nized one who was considered older than all others. The same 
holds true of the ancient Egyptians. The name of their oldest 
god was Nu. For modern instances among savage tribes, see 
Andrew Lang's book entitled "The Making of Religion," Part 
Second. 

Even if the oldest ethnic religions presented no traces of an 
earlier monotheism it would not disprove the biblical account of 
antediluvian religion. It might only prove that in the long period 
elapsing between the deluge and the date of the oldest records 
of profane history the widely scattered descendants of Noah 
either totally lost the knowledge of the one true God, or else 
placed the worship of their national and tribal divinities to such 
a degree in the foreground that in our exceedingly meager sources 
this worship seems the only one known and practiced. 

In proceeding with our study the aim of the student should be 
to acquire as clear an idea as possible of the nature, extent, and 
present state of the sources for the study of each of the above 
enumerated religions : also information as to the religion itself, 
the phases through which it passed, its significance for the history 
of human culture and for the World-Religion. 

More particular instruction as to means and methods mav at 



30 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

this stage be given orally and by assigned questions and topics in 
the classroom, following the order of the chapters below : 

CHAPTER I 
History of the Religion of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians. 

CHAPTER II 
History of the Religion of the ancient Egyptians. 

CHAPTER III 

History of the Religion of the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Canaanites, and 
Pre-Islamic Arabians. 

CHAPTER IV 
History of the ReHgion of the ancient Persians and Medo-Persians. 

CHAPTER V 
History of the Religion of the Pelasgians and Greeks. 

CHAPTER VI 
History of the Religion of the Etruscans and Romans. 

CHAPTER VII 

History of the Religion which at the close of the period vitally and perma- 
nently supplanted all the foregoing, to wit, the World-Religion. 

This last-named religion is so singularly imlike the other con- 
stituents of the group that before entering upon the study of its 
history during the period the student may well pause to note its 
characteristic quality. 

It should be observed, then, that while among the eldest peoples 
of the ancient world we find a vague and shadowy recognition 
of the God of heaven gradually giving place in historic times to 
increasingly polytheistic ethnic religions, and these in turn oft- 
times menaced and sometimes undermined by later speculative, 
moral, and religious movements, or by political revolutions, there 
is one line of history in which we see that primitive Heaven-God 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 31 

worship preserved and made more perfect from age to age. This 
remarkable Hne is that up which our own rehgion traces its 
genealogy. 

At first sight it might seem as if this unique and most remark- 
able of all historic developments in the religious sphere might 
more appropriately and logically be subdivided or resolved into 
three distinct religious systems, and classified thus : 

1. Primeval Religion, or the rude original germ of all the 
ancient religions, 

2. Judaism, as the ethnic or national system of the Jews. 

3. Christianity, as a beneficent schismatic and sectarian revolt 
from the narrowness and exclusiveness of the national Jewish 
faith. 

Those who recognize no superhuman element in the entire 
evolution do thus proceed. 

A deeper study of the whole subject, however, will manifest the 
impropriety of such classification, and the scientific necessity of 
conceding to this ancient worship a character and historic unity 
of its own. Its absolutely earliest form was, indeed, primeval, 
preethnic even, and hence, in a certain sense, the germ of all the 
most ancient religions of the world, but its Hebrew form was 
not ethnic in the proper sense. Although to the Hebrews a 
national religion, it was not national in the same sense as were the 
surrounding Gentile religions. It was believed by them that at the 
very beginning, and amid the revelations of Mount Sinai, Jehovah 
had declared the whole earth to be His (Exod. 19. 5). The 
first of the Ten Commandments implied the same doctrine. The 
Jews regarded themselves not as the monopolists, but, rather, as 
the temporary custodians of the true faith. They were trustees, 
guardians, executors, holding a precious legacy for the benefit 
of younger brothers not yet of age. They desired the divine 
blessing for themselves as a means of blessing for the whole 
world. '*God be merciful unto us, and bless us, that thy way may 



32 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

be known upon earth, thy saving health to all nations." They 
regarded their religion as universal in its nature and destination. 
From times unknown, it was understood, believed, and gloried in, 
that in Abraham's seed all nations of the earth were to be blessed. 
Thus was the Jewish religion not ethnic, local, limited, but, from 
the very dawn of its distinct and proper consciousness, self-con- 
sciously and professedly universal in its nature and possibilities. 

Nor was this universality merely ideal ; it was a trait which 
powerfully affected the life. From the days when Moses said to 
the Kenite Hobab, ''Come with us, and we will do thee good" 
(Num. lo. 29), to the time when Jesus declared to his country- 
men, '*Ye compass land and sea to make one proselyte," this 
zeal to bring all nations, in God's time and way, into the enjoy- 
ment of the privileges of their own religious covenant and com- 
munion was a signal characteristic of the Hebrew people. In 
Rahab and Ruth it was seen that converts from the Gentile na- 
tions could be promoted even to a place in the royal line of 
promise. In the Psalms, in Isaiah, and the other prophets, one 
can see how confidently, yea, how longingly, the nation looked 
forward to the time when the knowledge of the glory of their 
Jehovah should cover the whole earth ; when there would be no 
further need of proselyting teachers, no man needing to say to his 
brother, ''Know thou Jehovah" — all knowing him already, from 
the least unto the greatest. How perfectly opposed to the spirit 
of every ancient ethnic religion ! With these it was high treason 
to betray to neighboring peoples the sacred books, dogmas, or 
rites of the ancestral faith. King Tarquinius of Rome caused 
Valerius Soranus, a duumvir, to be sewed up in a sack and thrown 
into the sea for the crime of showing to Petronius, a Sabine, a 
book relating to the Roman religion. 

So far, indeed, was Old Testament religion from being an 
ethnic system that it would be far more correct and scientific to 
style it the one implacable historic antagonist of all ancient eth- 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 33 

nicisms. Age after age it stood a perpetual protest against them 
all. Even when overthrown and enslaved by surrounding powers, 
this strange people still confidently foretold the fall and failure 
of all these proud religions and states. Its prophets ridiculed, 
denounced, and doomed to destruction the mightiest deities of 
Egypt and Babylon, Phoenicia and Syria. The darker the present 
became, the brighter and nearer seemed to them the *'Day of 
Jehovah," when he should arise to shake terribly the earth ; when 
the idols he should utterly abolish. 

In like manner, the suggested analogy of Christianity to the 
religious systems and sects which have originated by way of 
"revolt" or "reaction" against ethnic religions is only of the 
most superficial and outward character. It has no basis in the 
real essence of Christianity. Reactionary sects and their systems 
arise, not from the ripening and perfecting of the essential prin- 
ciples and tendencies of the parent systems, as does Christianity, 
but from the opposition of principles and tendencies antag- 
onistic to the traditional religion. Christianity is not a new reli- 
gion ; it is merely a completer form of an older. If we are to 
call it a system distinct from the Jewish, it is a consummating, 
not a destroying, system. Jesus declared, "I came not to destroy, 
but to fulfill." Judaism, through all its traceable history, expected 
to flower out into a new dispensation upon the coming of the 
Promised One. Reactionary religions and sects reject, abhor, 
and demonize the gods of the ancestral worship, but Christians 
still worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Reactionary 
systems reject and destroy the teachings and sacred books of the 
parent system ; Christianity, on the contrary, reverently retains 
and hallows all revelations and scriptures of the Old Dispensa- 
tion. The founders of reactionary sects and systems promulgate 
new conditions of salvation ; in Christianity, on the contrary, the 
apostle usually counted the most radical and innovating of all 
expressly identifies the saving faith of the Christian with the sav- 



34 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

ing faith of Abraham (Gal. 3. 7-29; Rom. 4). Even on its own 
claims, Christianity is to Judaism what the substance is to the 
forecast shadow (Col. 2. 17; Heb. 10. i) ; what a message from 
God's Son is, compared with a message from forerunning, God- 
sent messengers (Matt. 21. 33-41; Heb. .1. i; 2. 4); what 
adult sonship is to the precedent stage of tutelage and pupilage 
(Gal. 4. 1-7) ; what the full corn in the ear is to the ear as yet 
unfilled (Mark 4. 26-29). These similes all go to show, not only 
that there is a recognized principle of unity underlying the suc- 
cessive dispensations of sacred history, but also that this unity 
is positive, organic, and institutional. With the progress of 
revelation, divine and human, the form has changed, but the 
essence has remained unchanged. This essence, according to 
its own persistent representation, is the kingdom and life of God 
in enlightened, renewed, and obedient souls. 

In yet another sense this progressive World-Religion is en- 
titled to its name. It is the perpetual heir of the world's divinest 
treasures in every land. It embodies and expresses the power 
which is slowly revealing the latent meaning of human history. 
In Abraham it receives and carries forth from Babylonia the 
oldest and most sacred traditions of the antediluvian world. 
In Moses it takes possession of all the wisdom of the Egyptians. 
At Jerusalem it employs the best art of the world, Phoenicia's, to 
build and adorn a nobler temple than ever Phoenicia saw. Even 
in captivity it makes the proudest Persian conqueror its servant. 
For its sacred books it borrows the matchless tongue of Hellas ; 
for schoolmasters for its children, the princely thinkers of Athens ; 
for the better equipment of its free-born apostle, the citizenship 
of Rome. Its field is the world. Conscious of a divine origin and 
mission, everywhere at home, it, and it alone, has shown quali- 
fication to overmaster all other systems, and having vitally ap- 
propriated whatever is vital in them, permanently to supplant 
them all. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 35 



Part II. History of the Principal Religions Known to the 

Mediceval World. 

Since the fall of the Ancient World, its heir, the on-moving 
World-Religion, has more than ever had custody and guidance 
of human culture. For some centuries its leading instrument 
for this service in the secular sphere was the scepter of the 
Roman empire. In this Christianized dominion more than any- 
where else, and more than ever before, the prehistorically dis- 
persed human race came to a consciousness of its unity. The old 
ethnic ideals fell, never to rise again. Provincialism in religion, 
as in manners and modes of thought, lost caste. Polytheism 
ceased to be suited to the cultivated; it was fit only for (pagani) 
rustic villagers. Purely ethnic philosophies and religions, like 
ethnic autochthonisms, needed no learned refutation; they 
simply found themselves left behind in the forward movement of 
Humanity. Under a redemptive experience of the All-Father- 
hood of God, men of the most diverse tribes and tongues quickly 
discerned and acknowledged the All-Brotherhood of Man. A 
new philosophy of the world and of its history burst into expres- 
sion in Augustine's "Civitas Dei," then hastened forward to 
fuller and even more immortal utterance in Dante's "Divina 
Commedia." 

With the progress of the endogenous growth of the World- 
Religion in the new world-culture during this period, every well- 
recognized survival of the elder ethnic systems disappeared, or 
was given a new and higher meaning. In the progress of its 
exogenous growth, on the frontiers of the monotheistic world, 
new ethnic cults were discovered, but none of them equaled, either 
in maturity or in grade of culture, the great ethnic religions of 
the elder world. In turn these fell, and at the close of the 
second period of universal history, as at the close of the first, the 



36 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

renewedly victorious World-Religion was found the heir and 
successor to all that had been. 

In the order of the following chapters the new forms of eth- 
nicisrn belonging to the period are successively to be studied. 
In all cases the data are very defective ; but here, as in similar 
cases, an important part of the profit of historical study consists in 
the discovery of the bounds of knowledge. 

CHAPTER I 

History of reestablished Zoroastrianism in the new kingdom of Persia 
under the Sassanidse. 

CHAPTER II 

History of the Religion of the Celtic Tribes. 

CHAPTER III 
History of the Religion of the Teutonic Tribes. 

CHAPTER IV 
History of the Religion of the Slavic Tribes. 

CHAPTER V 
History of the Religion of the West-Mongolians. 

CHAPTER VI 

Continuation of the History of the World-Religion — the monotheism which 
in Jewish, Christian, or Mohammedan form, at the end of the period, 
had vitally and permanently supplanted all the foregoing. 



The above order of treatment best answers to the historic 
movement as a whole. It also has the advantage of presenting 
Islamism in its true historic relations on the one hand to the ethnic 
systems (see above, Chapter III on page 30), and on the other 
to Judaism and Christianity. The place of the system in these 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 37 

latter relationships can best be seen under Chapter IV of Part 
First of Division Second of the present Book (page 40), and 
under Part Third of Division First of Book Second (page 51). 

In the study of this subordinate type of the World-Religion 
two points are of more than ordinary scientific as well as practical 
interest. First, the constant testimony borne by the Koran to the 
divine origin, authority, and truth of the Jewish and Christian 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. This is learnedly 
treated by Sir William Muir in his little work, "The Koran, 
Its Composition and Teaching, and the Testimony It Bears to 
the Holy Scriptures." In this, citing the original Arabic texts, 
he examines critically each of the one hundred and thirty-one 
passages of the Koran referring to the Bible, or quoting from it. 
He thus" finds and shows that Mohammed uniformly assumes the 
existence and currency of the Old and New Testaments in his 
time, that he calls them the Word of God, that he attests their 
inspiration and authority, and inculcates upon his followers 
obedience to them. 

The second point of peculiar interest is that, while Islamism 
claims for Mohammed the honor of being the latest of a series 
of twenty-five great prophets who have formed a holy succession 
from Adam downward, and while it gives special honor to Adam, 
Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Alohammed, as chief of these 
twenty-five, and as divinely appointed heads of successive divine 
dispensations, it yet remains a curious fact that of all these greater 
and lesser prophets, Jesus is the only one to whom the Koran 
imputes no sin, the only one who never needed the pardoning 
grace of God. That ^Mohammed was a sinner, and again and 
again needed the forgiveness of sins, is abundantly taught in 
such passages as Sura 4. 104, 105; 40. 21; 48. 1-3; 93. 6, 7; 
no. 3. 

It is also an interesting fact that all Mohammedans are Sec- 
ond Adventists in an approximately Christian sense of this 



38 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

term, and that it is their universal beHef that we are now Hving 
in the last times. Their true Mahdi may appear at any hour. 

All three forms of the one World-Religion strikingly con- 
verge in their eschatology. Jews, Christians, and Moslems teach 
an almost identical view of a resurrection, world- judgment, and 
world-renovation, in which the one divinely appointed Mediator 
is to play the central part. In Mohammedanism this final Con- 
summator of the Kingdom of God among men is held to be not 
Mohammed but Jesus Christ. 

In studying this period the following works will be found instructive : 
Harnack, "The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries." 
Bigg, "The Church's Task under the Empire." Uhlhorn, "Conflict of 
Christianity with Heathenism." Merivale, "Conversion of the Roman 
Empire"; "Conversion of the Northern Nations." Maclear, on the same 
subjects. E. G. Hardy, "Christianity and the Roman Government." 
Milman, "History of Latin Christianity." C L. Bruce, "Gesta Christi." 
Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." 

The best life of Mohammed is Muir's, which also includes a brief 
history of Islam; 4 vols., London, 1858-1860. There is also a condensa- 
tion in one volume. Sale's translation of the Koran has held a place oi 
honor since 1734. Rodwell's, giving the Suras in chronological order, was 
published in 1862 ; E. H. Palmer's, 2 vols., 1880. Lane's Selections from 
the Koran is a valuable compilation, and reached a second edition in 1879. 
The most accessible Commentary upon the Koran is that by E. N. Wherry ; 
4 vols., London, 1885. A valuable encyclopaedic work was published in 
1885 by Hughes, entitled "A Dictionary of Islam." See, also, his "Notes 
on Mohammedanism." Stanley Lane Poole edited a little work in 1882, 
under the title "The Speeches and Table Talk of Mohammed." An excel- 
lent text-book in small compass, is "The Faith of Islam," by E. Sell ; 
London, 1882. Useful and inexpensive are the following: Muir, "The 
Koran, Its Composition and Teaching," London, 1879; Stobart, "Islam 
and Its Founder," London, 1877; W. St. Clair-Tisdall, "The Religion of 
the Crescent," 1895; Henry Preserved Smith, "The Bible and Islam," 1897. 
Macdonald, "Aspects of Islam," 1910; and his "Development of Muslim 
Theology," 1903. On the early progress of Mohammedanism, see Gibbon's 
"Decline and Fall," Chapter L and onward ; also, Ockley's "History of the 
Saracens"; also, Muir, "Caliphate." "The Mohammedan World," 1907, 
is a recent survey of Mohannnedan countries. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 39 

Part III. History of the Principal Religions of the World 
brought to Light in Modern Times. 

Here belong all those successively disclosed by the progress 
of modern exploration before, during, and since the circumnavi- 
gation of the globe. They claim the attention of the student in 
the following order, as that in which they first claimed the at- 
tention of the civilized world : 

I. The religions of the West-Central and South African 
Tribes. 
11. The religions of the American Indians. 
III. The religions of the Pacific Islanders. 
IV. The religions of the East India Aborigines and 
Hindus. 
V. The religions of the aboriginal and present popula- 
tions of Farther India, and of the Islands of the 
Indian Ocean. 
VI. The religions of the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. 
VII. The religions of the North and Central Asiatic 
Nomads. 
VIII. The still advancing World-Religion, which, chiefly in 
its Christian form, has during the period more or less completely 
supplanted the foregoing in South Africa, in North and South 
America, in the chief Islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans ; 
which has taken political control of Africa, Northern and South- 
ern Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the whole of the New World ; 
and which is steadily establishing itself in every unchristianized 
portion of the globe. 

In the case of the first, second, third, fifth, and seventh of the 
above-mentioned religions, it is plainly impossible to trace their 
rise and historic development. The data are entirely lacking. 
On the other hand, the religions of the Hindus and Chinese 
present historic developments full of interest and importance. 



40 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 



DIVISION SECOND 

The History of Developments Common to Several Par- 
ticular Religions 

The lines of historic investigation presenting themselves under 
this head are almost numberless. For our present propaedeutic 
purpose the more important of them are the following: 

Part I. History of the Rise and Development of Racial, Na- 
tionalj Tribal, or other types or varieties from a Religion 

originally single. 

I. The Proto-Semitic Religion in its development into the 
historic systems of Assyria, Phoenicia, the Canaanites, 
etc. 
II. The Pre-Vedic Proto-Aryan Religion in its development 
into the various historic systems of the Indo-Germanic 
peoples. 

III. Original Buddhism in its development into the Ceylonese, 

Burmese, Chinese, Tibetan, and other varieties. 

IV. Earliest Monotheism in its development into the existing 

systems and sects. 

Part 1 1. History of the Absorption of lesser and more local 
Religions into greater and more prevalent Ones. 

Examples : 
I. In the history of ancient Babylonia. 
II. In the history of ancient Egypt. 

III. In the history of the Persian Empire. 

IV. In the history of the Roman Empire. 
V. In the history of Buddhism. 

VI. In the history of the World-Religion. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 41 

Part III. History of the Rise and Development of various Cults 
common to several Particular Religions. 

Here belong such as the following: 
I. Ancestor and hero-worship. 
II. Light, fire, sun, moon, and star worship. 

III. Worship of terrestrial objects (zoolatry, phytolatry, den- 

drolatry, etc). 

IV. Worship of spirits shamanistically conceived of by their 

worshipers. 

Part IV. History of the Rise and Development of particular 
Rites and Usages, or Institutions common to several Religions. 

Here are meant such as: 

I. Animal sacrifices, and religious offerings in general. 
II. Divination in its various forms. 

III. Religious tonsure ; circumcision, and other bodily mutila- 

tions from religious motives; human sacrifice. 

IV. Religious festivals ; orgies ; pilgrimages to holy places, etc. 
V. Priesthoods, and other religious orders. 

VI. Temple building; sacred art, etc. 

Part V. History of the Rise and Progress of various Speculative 
Movements common to several Religions. 

Here are meant such movements as : 
I. That toward speculative theism. 
II. That toward speculative atheism. 

III. That toward pantheism. 

IV. That toward dualism. 
V. That toward optimism. 

VI. That toward pessimism. 
VII. That toward casualism. 
VIII. That toward fatalism. 



42 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

Part VI. History of the Rise and Progress of various Practical 
Tendencies common to different Religions. 

Here belong such tendencies and movements as : 
I. That toward Hfeless doctrinal dogmatism. 
11. That toward revolutionary skepticism. 

III. That toward religious mysticism. 

IV. That toward hierarchical ceremonialism. 

V. That toward eremitic and cenobitic asceticism. 
VI. That toward aggressive proselytizing or persecuting fa- 
naticism. 



DIVISION THIRD 

The History of Matters Common to All Religions, or the 
History of Religion Universally Considered 

The imperfection of our sources renders it as yet impossible to 
elaborate in a really satisfactory manner any considerable period 
or even branch of the universal history of religion. 

The following among other conceivable lines of investigation 
suggest in a rough way the interest and the immense extent of the 
field : 

I. A synchronological history of the rise and development of 
the religions of the world, including a conspectus of 
their present state, geographically, ethnologically, and 
statistically considered. 
II. History of the actions and reactions of religions upon each 
other, and the effects thereof upon the history of re- 
ligion universally considered. 
HI. History of religious delusions and impostures. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 43 

IV. History of religion viewed as a disuniting and as a re- 
uniting factor in the ethnical and national life of 
humanity. 
V. History of the religious conceptions and life of mankind 
set forth from the standpoint of professed agnosticism. 

VI. History of the religious conceptions and life of mankind 
set forth from the standpoint of the World-Religion. 

At this point the History of Religions introduces and gives 
place to the Philosophy of Religion, for an intelligible history 
of the world's religious phenomena as a whole includes of 
necessity an explanation of the methods in which, and of the 
reasons on account of which, they have become what they are, 
and this of course is a Philosophy of Religion-historically-con- 
sidered. 



BOOK SECOND 



The Religious Phenomena of the World Systematically 

Considered 



(HiEROGRAPHY GENERAL AND SPECIAL ; OR, THE PHENOME- 
NOLOGY OF Religions and of Religion) 



Introduction to the Book. 

Division L Systematic Exposition of Particular Religions. 

Division II. Systematic Exposition of iMatters Common to 
Several Particular Religions. 

Division III. Systematic Exposition of Matters Common to 
All Religions. 



INTRODUCTION 



In the preceding Book we have had to do with rehgiou.i de- 
velopments as processes ; here we have to do with their results. 
The difference is well illustrated by that existing between the 
sciences called the History of Christian Doctrine and Didactic 
Theology. While the cultivator of the one studies the genesis 
and successive modifications of a particular process in the life 
of the Christian Church, the cultivator of the other studies the 
accomplished result of the same process at a particular point 
of time. The same relation exists on a broader field between the 
History of the Surface of the Earth and Geography. In each 
case the one of the related sciences shows us the origin and prog- 
ress of a historic movement ; the other, the attained historic 
result. The one is profluent in character, the other static. 

In approaching the systematic treatment of the religious phe- 
nomena of the world as a whole, the first questions encountered 
are those relating to point of view, classification of systems, and 
order of treatment. As to the first no scholar undertaking work 
in this field can satisfy his readers, or even himself, if in advance 
of his exposition he have not personally reached what seems to 
him the true point of view for the understanding of the facts 
he is about to present. Of such points of view three have found 
many exponents — so many indeed that Jordan, in his "Compara- 
tive Religion," Chapter VII, describes them as constituting three 
distinct "schools." The first of these make "divine Revelation" 
the antecedent of all human experience of a religious character. 
The second hold that men have attained to such religious light 
and experience as they possess through a process of "purely 

47 



48 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

natural Evolution." The third — more wisely — aim to harmonize 
the truths one-sidedly emphasized by the first and second by show- 
ing that the very essence of religion implies a mutual activity on 
the part of the Divine Object and the Human Subject. 

The classification of religious systen;s for the purpose of sys- 
tematic exposition should be primarily based on the order of their 
historic succession. Ancient religions should be presented before 
the modern. So in those cases where a continuous religious 
development has successively culminated in systems quite distinct 
from each other, these successive systems should also be ex- 
pounded in the same order in which they appear. Thus in the 
case of Hindu religion, the Vedic system should be expounded 
before the Brahmanical, the Brahmanical before the conglomer- 
ate system now prevalent. The reasons for such adherence to the 
historical order are too obvious to need enumeration. 

As to contemporary religions, ancient or modern, several 
principles of classification are possible, each with its own peculiar 
advantages. For example, in the days of Tacitus the national 
religion of the Germans was contemporary with a great number 
of other religious systems ; but if, in classifying the religions of 
that date with a view to lucid exposition, one follow the principle 
of ethnological affinity, and, accordingly, study and exhibit the 
Germanic system in connection with the related mythologies and 
rites of other Indo-European peoples, Hindu, Persian, Greek, 
Roman, Celtic, Slav, etc., the task will be greatly simplified and 
the result more truly scientific. On the other hand, there are 
often found groups of contemporary religions where the ethno- 
logical principle of classification is entirely inapplicable. The 
peoples among whom they are found are so mixed, or so diverse 
as to race-character, that the attempt to keep race-peculiarities 
in view would only introduce confusion. The ancient Baby- 
lonians are such a people ; the Egyptians another ; even the 
Chinese, in the broad sense, another. Indeed, so rare are the 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 49 

instances of religious systems embodying and expressing what 
may be called race-ideas and race-tendencies that some eminent 
writers deny their existence altogether, and affirm that all his- 
toric forms of religion should be scientifically presented in their 
relation to nations — none of them in their imagined relation to 
races. If this view be thought one-sided and extreme, it at least 
has the merit of reminding us of the cases where the national or 
political principle of classification may be more advantageously 
employed than anywhere else ; namely, in the grouping of the 
contemporary religions of ethnographically mixed peoples. 

For a statement and criticism of the leading classifications of 
religions proposed by recent writers, see Jastrow's work, entitled 
"The Study of Religion," Chapter II, pp. 58-128. (The classi- 
fication proposed by himself, p. 117, has not escaped an equally 
earnest criticism in its turn.) 



^ DIVISION FIRST 

Particular Religions Systematically Treated 

For the purpose of a systematic treatment, the grouping of the 
leading religions of the world according to the order proposed for 
their historical study in Book I, Division I, would present many 
advantages, and should, perhaps, have the preference over all 
others. Should one desire to vary it, however, it might be found 
convenient to group all religions in the following classes : 

L The Extinct Ethnic. 
IL The Yet Surviving Ethnic. 
IIL The Monotheistic Systems. 

Adopting this classification, the present Division includes three 
several Parts. 



so THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

Part I. Systematic Exposition of the Chief Extinct Ethnic Re- 
ligions of the World. 

The exposition should include not only their conceptions or 
doctrines, but also their religious institutions, rites, customs, 
sacred objects, etc. Here belong, among others, the religions: 

I. Of the Ancient Babylonians and Assyrians. 

II. Of the Ancient Egyptians. 

III. Of the Phoenicians, Canaanites, and Arabians. 

IV. Of the Greeks. 
V. Of the Romans. 

VI. Of the Celts. 

VII. Of the Teutons. 

VIII. Of the Slavs. 

IX. Of the Mexicans. 

X. Of the Peruvians. 

In few if any of the above have we reason for believing that 
the religious development culminated in successive systems so 
distinct and separate from each other as to call for separate de- 
scriptive treatment. 

Part II. Systematic Exposition of the Chief Living Ethnic 

Religions of the World. 

Here belong, among others, the religions : 

I. Of the Hindus. 

II. Of the more or less Buddhistic populations of Eastern 
Asia. 

III. Of the Parsees. 

IV. Of the Barbarian World. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 51 

Part IIL Systematic Exposition of the Chief Successive Forms 
of the ever-forzvard-looking World-Religion. 

These are, of course : 
I. The Hebrew Form (Ancient Judaism). 
II. The Apostolic (Primitive Christianity). 

III. The Oriental Christian Form (Greek Church). 

IV. The Arabian, Judseo-Christian (Islam). 
V. The Latin Christian (Romanism).- 

VI. The Teutonic Christian (Protestantism). 
VII. The fast ripening flower and fruit of all historic forms 
in an actualized kingdom of God on earth. 



DIVISION SECOND 

Systematic Treatment of Matters Common to Several 

Religions 

The comparative study of any group of religions, whether 
naturally and historically related or arbitrarily selected, discloses 
certain likenesses and unlikenesses in their characteristic concep- 
tions, beliefs, and usages. These resemblances and differences 
are always interesting and often highly instructive, especially as 
contributions toward a true Philosophy of Religion and a true 
Philosophy of History. Systematically presented, they constitute 
Comparative Theolog}', properly so called. 



52 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

Part I. Systematic Exposition of Conceptions common to 
Various Religions selected for comparison. 

These conceptions may be most lucidly presented in two 
parallel classes in parallel columns, the first of which relates to 
monotheistic, the second to non-monotheistic, religions : 

I. Their conceptions of L Their Theogonies and 
God. Theologies. 

II. Their conceptions of the II. Their Cosmogonies and 
Creation of the World. Cosmologies. 

III. Their conceptions of IIL Ethnic Pneumatology 
Angels and Men. (Metempsychosis, etc.). 

IV. Conception of the one IV. Ethnic views of Moral 
divine Law, and of Sin. Obligation and of Evil. 

V. Divinely-sent Teachers V. Self-attained Seership, 
and Prophets. Buddhahood, etc. 

VI. Their conceptions of VI. Their conception of De- 
Salvation from Sin. liverance from Evil. 

VII. Their conceptions of VII. Their conceptions of 
Death and of the Future. Death and of the Future. 



Part IL Systematic Exposition of the Ethical Ideals and Moral 
Life achieved in various Religions selected for Compari- 
son as repects: 

I. The Duties of Piety. 

II. The Duties of Parents and Children. 

III. The Duties of Husbands and Wives. 

IV. The Duties of Masters and Servants. 
V. The Duties of Rulers and Subjects. 

VI. The Duties of Man to Beast. 
VII. The Duties of Man to Man. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 53 

Part III. Systematic Exposition of the Laws and Institutional 
Life of various Religions selected for Comparison. 

I. Forms of Organization and Administration. 

II. Laws touching Initiation, Discipline, etc. 

III. Laws touching Rites of an ordinary or periodic character. 

IV. Laws touching Rites of an extraordinary or unique 

character. 
V. Laws relating to the Priesthoods exclusively. 
VI. General codes of religious laws ; Sacred Books ; relation 
of the Individual to the Governing Power in different 
religions, etc. 



DIVISION THIRD 

Systematic Treatment of Matters Common to All Religions 

In the present condition of knowledge a satisfactory system- 
atic treatment of the matters common to all religions is impos- 
sible. The divisions below are intended only as suggestions of. 
what would be desirable if practicable. 

Part I. Conceptions Common to All Religions. 

I. Conceptions of the Divine. 

II. Conceptions of the Origin of Things. 

III. Conceptions of the Origin of Man. 

IV. Conceptions of the Origin of Evil. 

V. Conceptions of Deliverance from Evil. 
VI. Conceptions of the Highest Good. 



54 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

Part II. Sentiments Common to All Religions. 

I. The sentiment of Dependence upon somewhat extra- 
human. 
II. The sentiment of ObHgation toward that extra-human 
somewhat. 

III. The sentiment of moral Self-approval with respect to 

the object or objects of religion. 

IV. The sentiment of moral Self-reprobation in the same 

respect. 
V. The sentiments of religious hope and fear; trust and 
distrust ; love and hate, etc. 

Part III. Practices Common to All Religions. 

I. Practices expressive predominantly of religious Self- 
surrender. 
II. Practices expressive predominantly of religious Self- 
assertion. 

In the foregoing Division, as before in the corresponding 
Division Third of Book I, we make a transition to a branch of 
the Philosophy of Religion. There (p. 43) we saw the History 
of Religious Phenomena universally considered merge itself into 
the Philosophy of Religion-historically-considered. Here, by a 
like inherent necessity, the Systematic Exposition of Religion- 
universally-considered merges itself in the Philosophy of Reli- 
gion-systematically-considered. No exposition of the religious 
phenomena of the world as a whole can be truly and completely 
systematic that does not make clear the logical interrelations of 
all and the rational significance of all, and this twofold office is 
the task of the Philosophy of Religion-systematically-considered. 
Thus both the historic and the systematic procedures prepare the 
way for and in the end give place to the philosophic. 



BOOK THIRD 



The Religious Phenomena of the World Philosophically 

Considered 



(The Philosophy of Religion) 



Introduction to the Book. 

Division I. Philosophy of the Object of Rehgion and of His 
Manward Self-revelation. 

Division II. Philosophy of the Subject of Religion and of His 
Godward Self-revelation. 

Division III. Philosophy of the Interrelations of Subject and 
Object in the Vital Movement of the World- 
Religion. 



INTRODUCTION' 



An introduction to the Philosophy of Rehgion should include 
at least the following topics: 

I. The Aim and Possibility of a Philosophy of Religion. 
II. The Relation of the Philosophy of Religion to other 
branches of Philosophy. 

III. The Relation of the Philosophy of Religion to the History, 

and to the Systematic Exposition of Religion. 

IV. History, Literature, and Present State of the Philosophy 

of Religion. 
V. Different fundamental Standpoints and Postulates of dif- 
ferent Philosophies of Religion. 
VI. Plan and Method of treatment demanded by the present 
state of religious knowledge and by present currents 
of thought and life. 

A word respecting each must take the place of fuller exposition. 

Ad primiim. We may define the Philosophy of Religion as 
that synthesis of the Philosophy of God and of the Philosophy of 
Man and of the Philosophy of their natural and personal relations 
in which all facts relative to the attitude and bearing of each 
to the other find their rational explanation. Its aim is to harmon- 



^ Our most elaborate work in the English language, entitled an "Introduction to the 
Philosophy of Religion," is that by Principal John Caird, of Glasgow University, published 
1880. This, however, is rather an outline of a Philosophy of Religion than an introduction 
to it. Thus it first vindicates the possibility and propriety of a philosophic handling of 
Religion (Chapters I-III); then treats of the Necessity of Religion; the Proofs of the Ex- 
istence of God; of the Religious Consciousness; of the Inadequacy of Religious Knowledge 
in the Unscientific Form; of the Transition of the Speculative Idea of Religion; of the 
Religious Life and Relation of Morality to Religion; and, finally, of the relation of the 
Philosophy to the History of Religion (Chapters IV-X). Under none of the above heads 
is the branch of learning to which the author proposes to introduce us defined as to matter, 
aim, method, or its relation to other branches of human investigation. On these points, 
however, more than any other, the beginner needs to be enlightened, 

57 



58 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

ize and unify, and thus to rectify and more perfectly interpret 
men's conceptions respecting the Subject, Object, and Essence of 
ReHgion. Its possibihty is absolute, so far as facts and phenomena 
are concerned; relative and limited, however, when considered 
with reference to our hmited knowledge and limited powers. 

Ad secundum. The Philosophy of Religion, being the synthesis 
of the philosophy of the infinite and of the finite, necessarily 
stands at the summit of all philosophic disciplines, crowning and 
unifying the whole. It is the queen of all, and to her all are di- 
rectly and logically tributary. 

Ad tertinm. The relation of the Philosophy of Religion to the 
History and to the Systematic Exposition. of Religion has been 
briefly but perhaps sufficiently hinted in the closing remarks 
under Book I and Book II [pp. 43 and 54]. 

Ad quartum. The History of the Philosophy of Religion is well 
presented in the partially translated work of Piinjer. The student 
may profitably consult Otto Pfleiderer, ''Philosophy of Religion," 
vols, i and ii. 

Ad quintum. The Philosophy of Religion can be treated from 
as many fundamentally different subjective standpoints as any 
other branch of philosophy. Hence we must be prepared to see 
it treated by the most varied and antagonistic writers, each from 
his own peculiar point of view : agnostic, sensationalistic, ideal- 
istic, skeptic, mystic, eclectic, etc. And of this religion must not 
complain; it is only subject to the same fortune as befalls all 
subjects of human thought. 

But besides these subjective standpoints there are also certain 
objective postulates which lead to treatments fundamentally 
diverse. Such postulates are those of materialistic monism, ideal- 
istic monism, undifferentiated monism, those of various forms 
of dualism, etc. 

Among all these various standpoints and postulates it is the 
duty of every writer upon the Philosophy of Religion, first, to 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 59 

make an intelligent and conscientious choice ; then, having chosen, 
to define and vindicate his choice, and remain logically true to it. 

Ad sextiiin.^ On the proper divisions and methods of a Phi- 
losophy of Religion little has as yet been written. Nor is it easy 
to set forth any single distribution of the matter or any single 
method for its treatment that can claim superiority in all respects 
over others. For since ever}^ related group of religious phe- 
nomena, however small and however isolated, demands at the 
hands of the interpreter of religion a rational explanation, it is 
evident that this department of study can be divided into an almost 
unlimited number of constituent branches, and that these are 
susceptible of almost any number of varying arrangements, com- 
binations, and treatments, according to one's point of view and 
according to one's aim in the total construction. ^ 

For our present purpose the most simple and lucid procedure 
will doubtless be to present, in three divisions, the Subject, the 
Object, and the Interrelations of the Subject and Object of 
Religion. 



DIVISION FIRST 

Human Personality in Its Relation to the Divine 

This Division includes two Parts: the first conducting to the 
postulate of a Divine Personality, and the second to that in which 
this Divine Personality, when perfectly expressed, ultimates. 

PART I 

Human Personality, in its self-revelations, implies another Per- 
sonality divinely perfect. 



1 For German plans see works on "The Philosophy of Relipion" by Piinjer (1886); R. 
Schultze (1886); Teichmiiller (i868); Von Hartmann ('1888); Rauwenhoff (i88q); Sydel 
(1893); Siebeck (1893); Krause (1893); He?el (Eng. tr. .1895); Runze (1901); A. Domer 
(1903) ; Troeltsch (1906). Consult also the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia, sub voc^. 



6o THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

The study of Man, from the point of view of reHgion, calls 
for a consideration of at least four important problems, and these, 
with our solutions, may be formulated as in the following sug- 
gested chapters, to wit: 

CHAPTER I 
Nature of the human Subject? (Ontological Inquiry.) 

Outcome : A living personality, neither self-originated nor self-sus- 
tained; needing, therefore, for the explanation of his being and life an 
adequate antecedent cause or combination of causes. 

CHAPTER II 

What causes are intimately connected with the origination and develop- 
ment of each human subject? (Etiological Inquiry.) 

Outcome: As the proximate causes, the Parents are to be mentioned; 
as remoter, the Race which produces human parents ; as remoter yet, 
the Universe of finite causes which produces and sustains all races of 
animate being. Furthermore, since all these causes interact and are 
mutually preadjusted for cooperation toward ends submoral and moral, 
this preadjustment itself also calls for an adequate cause. 

CHAPTER III 

What cause, moral or submoral, would adequately account for the exist- 
ence of those preadjusted cosmic and human energies in virtue of 
whose action and interaction the human subject is produced and de- 
veloped in character? (Ethico-cosmical Inquiry.) 

Outcome : No cause other than an Intelligent Will, antedating human- 
ity, and continuously expressing itself in the natural and ethical environ- 
ment of every human being. 

CHAPTER IV 
What more adequately than anything else explains the purpose of the 
human world;, and especially the rational significance of the universal 
human aspiration after fellowship with a nonhuman personality 
worthy of sincerest worship? (Teleological Inquiry.) 
Outcome : The postulate of a beginningless and endless Personality, 
working from ethical aims, and effecting, under the forms of time and 
space, a perpetually on-going Self-manifestation or Self-revelation of 
Himself, in and unto finite intelligences. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 6i 

PART II 

The Self -revelation of God in and unto Man; issuing in the postu- 
late of a Divine Incarnation. 

The Self-revelation of God should be studied with reference to 
its primal motive, its law, its possible forms, and its possible con- 
summation. 

CHAPTER I 
The Source or primal Motive of all normal Self-revelations. 

Outcome : Unselfish love the only worthy Source or primal Motive of 
self-revelation in the personal sphere, 

CHAPTER II 
The Law of all normal Self-revelation of God. 

Outcome : All self- revelations of the Infinite Personality to finite one^ 
are modes of self-limitation ; on the contrary, every right self-revelation 
of the finite personality to the Infinite is a mode of emancipation from 
self-limitations. 

CHAPTER III 
Forms of the Self-revelation of God. 

Outcome T The forms of the self-revelation of God are determined 
partly by His own nature, partly by the counterbearing of those for 
whom the revelation is designed. 

CHAPTER IV 

The Self-revelation of God as affected by pious forms of self-surrender 
on the part of Man. 
Outcome : The receptiveness and responsiveness of a man at any 
moment the gauge of the present possibilities of God's self-revelation to 
that man, but not the gauge of future possibilities. 

CHAPTER V 

The Self-revelation of God as affected by im-pious forms of self-surrender 
on the part of Man. 

Outcome : The unreceptiveness and irresponsiveness of a man at any 
moment the gauge of the present barriers to God's self-revelation to that 
man, but not the gauge of future barriers. 



62 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

CHAPTER VI 
God's Self-revelation to Man in its intensive Perfection. 

Outcome : The self-revelation of God to Man can reach intensive com- 
pletion only in a divine Incarnation (God personally becoming a partaker 
of man's nature). 

CHAPTER VII 
God's Self-revelation in its extensive Perfection. 

Outcome : The self-revelation of God to Man cannot be conceived of 
as ever attaining extensive completion. This would require not only the 
conception of a completed Humanity, but also that of a finished activity 
on the part of God. 



DIVISION SECOND 

The Divine Personality in Its Relation to the Human 

This Division includes two Parts : the first conducting to the 
postulate of human Personalities, and the second to that in which 
human personality, when perfectly self-expressed, ultimates. 

PART I 

The Divine Personality, in its self-revelations, implies other 
personalities humanly imperfect. 

The study of God, from the point of view of religion, calls 
for a consideration of at least four important problems, and these, 
with our solutions, may be formulated as in the following sug- 
gested chapters, to wit : 

CHAPTER I 

Assuming that God is the living and ever-living Personality described in 
the Division just outlined, and that the nature and forms of his self- 
manifestation are as there set forth, what explanation can be given of 
the existence and wide prevalence of Polytheism? 
Outcome : The variety in human capacity for the apprehension of the 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 63 

divine must not be forgotten. So long as men radically differ in their 
conceptions of the world, and of human nature itself, we need not be 
surprised that they also differ as to the number, and even as to the nature 
of the i>roper objects of worship. 

CHAPTER II 

But if men differ so utterly in their conceptions of their own nature, and 
of the world in which they livG, and as to the number and nature of 
the beings entitled to worship, what unitary ground can there be war- 
ranting us in classifying all religions as species or varieties of one 
genus? 

Outcome : Men are not unrelated units, but a race — one race — and all 
religionists hold that there is but one normal bearing for the worshiper 
to observe over against the being or beings he worships ; this bearing 
being one of personal loyalty and sincere good will. In this fundamental 
doctrine polytheist and monotheist stand upon common ground. 

CHAPTER HI 

But in case there has been in any worshiper, in any land, a conscious 
lack of personal loyalty and good will toward the being or beings 
worshiped, what is the result as shown in universal human ex- 
perience ? • • 

Outcome : The prime result is a sense of personal guilt in the mind of 
the offender, and an impulse toward effort for deliverance from the guilt. 
^Moreover, in the mind of such a worshiper there is never an expectation 
of deliverance by any subjective process or act limited to his own con- 
sciousness — he believes that the author or custodian of the obligation 
violated must have a part in the restoration of normal relations. 

CHAPTER IV " 

What more adequately than anything else explains the unity and the 
multiformity of God's self-manifestations in the field of religion? 

Outcome: The postulate of a Race of genealogically cohering, indi- 
vidually and cooperatively self-actualizing personalities, working from 
ethical and unethical aims, and effecting, under the forms of time and 
space, a perpetually on-going self-manifestation or self-revelation of 
itself and of its constituent personalities in and unto God. 



64 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 



PART II 

The Self -revelation of Man in and unto God; issuing in the postu- 
late of a human Indivination. 

Unlike that of God, the self-revelation of a man is twofold, 
normal and abnormal. Some of his forms of self-assertion are 
pious, some are impious. The philosophy of the total revelation 
must include the one class as fully as the other. 

Again, human self-manifestations are more than the term im- 
plies. They not only show what the self now is, but also help 
to determine what the self is hereafter to be. 

CHAPTER I 

Sin as a mode of Self-revelation. 

Outcome : While unselfish love should be the primal motive in all self- 
revelation, selfish love is the primal motive in this. 

CHAPTER II 

The Law of sinful Self-revelation. 

Outcome: The self-revelation being an unnatural one, its law is also 
unnatural : the revelation follows a law, not of emancipation, but of en- 
slavement to unnatural self-limitations. 

CHAPTER III 

Forms of sinful Self-revelation. 

Outcome : The forms of the sinful self-revelation of men are deter- 
mined partly by their own nature, partly by the counterbearing of Him 
against whom these self-revelations are directed. 

CHAPTER IV 

Holy living as a mode of Self-revelation on the part of Man. 

Outcome : Here man reaches the primal motive of God's self-revelation, 
a pure and unselfish love. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 65 

CHAPTER V 
The Law of holy Self-revelation. 

Outcome : Here man comes under the blessed law of progressive 
emancipation from self-limitations, and constantly increasing assimilation 
to God. 

CHAPTER VI 

Forms of holy Self-revelation on the part of Man. 

Outcome : Every pious self-assertion on the part of man calls out new 
self-revelations on the part of God, and so renders possible new degrees 
and forms of holy self-revelation on man's part, and all this in indennite 
successions of action and reaction. 

CHAPTER VII 
Man's Self-revelation in and unto God in its intensive Perfection. 

Outcome : The self-revelation of Man in and unto God can reach inten- 
sive completeness only in a human Indivination (Man personally becom- 
ing a partaker of the divine nature). 

CHAPTER VIII 

Man's Self-revelation in and unto God in its extensive Perfection. 

Outcome : The self-revelation of Man in and unto God cannot be con- 
ceived of a^ ever attaining extensive completion. This would require not 
only the conception of a completed Humanity, but also that of a finished 
activity on the part of the deathless sons of God. 



DIVISION THIRD 

The past, present and future Interrelations of Object 
AND Subject as determined and perpetually redeter- 
mined IN THE ONE vital HISTORIC MOVEMENT OR 
PROCESS OF THE WoRLD-ReLIGION 

We here face the sum total of the religious phenomena of the 
world. All these phenomena both imply and illustrate in one 
or more aspects the interrelation of God and man at one or more 
points in the historic process of the World-Religion. 



66 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

PART I 

The Interrelations of God and Man as seen in the Ideal. 

This may be presented in various aspects, as in the following 

chapters: 

CHAPTER I 

Intellectual Interrelation as determined by ideally perfect reciprocal Self- 
revelations on the part of God and Man. 

Outcome: Ideally perfect intellectual intercommunion of God and Man. 

CHAPTER II • 

Emotional Interrelation as determined by ideally perfect reciprocal Self- 
revelations on the part of God and Man. 

Outcome : Ideally perfect intercommunion of feeling between God and 
Man. 

CHAPTER III 

Volitional Interrelation as determined by ideally perfect reciprocal Self- 
revelations on the part of God and Man. 

Outcome : Ideally perfect intercomm.union of will and purpose between 
God and Man. 

CHAPTER IV 

The Ideal Interrelations in their vital unity. 

Outcome : Since the ideally perfect self-revelation of God culminates 
in a divine Incarnation, and the ideally perfect self-revelation of Man 
culminates in a human Indivination, the ideally perfect Interrelations of 
God and Man in their vital unity are presented in no other religion than 
in the World-Religion, and in no other consciousness than that of the 
God-man. 

CHAPTER V 

Review of the Religions of the World, the ancient and the modern, in the 
light of ideally perfect Religion. 



' AND THE WORLD-RELIGIOK 67 

PART II 

The Interrelations of God and Man as given in Christian 

Consciousness. 

In proportion as the self-revealing man comes to a clear per- 
ception of the self-revealing God, in like proportion does he be- 
come conscious of an interrelation subsisting between himself 
and God. In case his own self-revelation is proceeding from an 
unholy principle, he is conscious that the relation between him- 
self and the holy God is one of vital estrangement and opposition. 
On the other hand, if his own Godward bearing of mind and will 
and affection is the normal response of the creature to the care 
and benevolence and affection of his Creator, the mutual personal 
Verhalten results in a mutual personal V erhdltniss as normal and 
blessed as the activities from which it proceeds and by which it 
is maintained. And this relationship of intercommunion and fel- 
lowship is more truly and vitally a matter of consciousness than 
can be a like relationship between two most intimate sharers in 
a human friendship. 

The actual interrelations of a particular human soul and God 
are normal in proportion as they approximate the above-defined 
ideal. 

The evolution of the Christian Consciousness has often been 
misrepresented. It differs in different persons — differs with re- 
spect to the successional order of experiences, and with respect 
to sudden or slow attainments of insight. It is in all cases a 
divine-human product, but many things are true of it in its 
maturity that are not true of it in earlier stages. Many teachers 
have failed to represent it correctly because of a failure on their 
part to perceive the dependence of one spiritual perception or 
experience upon another, or upon a preceding group. It is diffi- 
cult to construct a description of the process which shall cover 
all cases in all stages of earthly development, but the following 



68 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

covers at least a typical case, and gives due prominence to the 
proportionality of one element to another in the ever-growing 
result : 

1. In order to the ultimate attainment o£ complete self-knowl- 
edge, and in order to the acquisition of the power to pass just 
judgments upon himself, every human being in the process of 
his development from infancy to maturity of reason has need of 
instruction from some source apart from himself. 

2. In proportion as the developing human being, aided by true 
and wholesome instruction, becomes competent to form just judg- 
ments relative to his own physical, mental, and spiritual activities 
and qualities, in like proportion does he come to recognize the 
fact that, judged even according to his own ideals, he is to a 
greater or less extent culpably defective and imperfect — a being 
who, with more or less of voluntary consent, practically comes 
short of the possible perfections of his own life and character. 

3. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being, 
perplexed by this discovery, struggles to comprehend the nature 
and implications and sanctions of his own ideals, and in conduct 
strives with redoubled earnestness to measure up to the best possi- 
bilities of his being, in like proportion does he become conscious 
of the presence and agency of an environing Personality all per- 
fect and holy, a God in whom he lives and moves and has his 
being. 

4. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being 
attains this consciousness of God and of his own natural and 
personal relations to God, in like proportion does he come to 
perceive that his own capacities for improvement are God-given, 
and that all instruction in or toward a holy development — what- 
ever the name, or nature, or means of that instruction — is a 
form of Divine Revelation. 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 69 

5. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being 
is thus brought to discern the manifoldness and continuousness 
of Divine Revelation, in like proportion does he come to recog- 
nize the fact that all history and all reality are but modes of a 
perpetual, all-inclusive Self-manifestation of the Divine. 

6. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being 
is brought to this perception of the perpetually and universally 
progressing Self-manifestation of God, in like proportion does 
he come to expect in human nature and in the human sphere possi- 
bilities and instances of divine disclosure superior to any else- 
where discoverable. 

7. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being 
thus comes to expect in human nature the highest known or as 
yet knowable forms of God's Self-manifestation, in like propor- 
tion does he reach the assured conviction that in God's eternal 
purpose humanity was intended to be an organ of the Divine, 
and that in the historic ripening of God's purpose in and through 
the agencies of his temporal kingdom there shall ultimately come 
to be a redeemed and renovated humanity, faultlessly expressive 
of the divine holiness, a habitation of God through the Spirit. 

8. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being 
inspired by such an anticipation, searches through history to dis- 
cover any foretokens of this consummation of all things in a divin- 
ized humanity, and especially to discover any individuals in whom 
the divinizing process may seem to have been anticipated and 
measurably foreshown, in like proportion does he come to fix upon 
Jesus of Nazareth as the one man in whom the divine indwelling 
and outshining are apparently complete — the one man best en- 
titled to be considered an archetype of perfected humanity. 

9. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being, 
moved by the sense of his own culpable imperfections, and by the 
inworkings of his divine environment, cordially surrenders him- 



70 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

self to the divine activities and lovingly strives to become an 
organic yet most personal part of God's Self-manifestation 
in humanity, in like proportion does he find his personal ideals, 
aspirations, and activities coming into living conformity with 
those historically exemplified in Christ Jesus. 

10. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being 
advances in this progressive conformity of ideals, aspirations, and 
activities to the ideals, aspirations, and activities of Jesus Christ, 
in like proportion does he become a living and more or less con- 
scious partaker of the Spirit of Christ, the Comforter, who, 
according to promise, is given to guide into all truth. 

11. In proportion as the instructed and developing human being 
thus becomes a living and conscious partaker of Christ's Spirit, 
in like proportion does he become conscious of a vital personal 
relation to all other partakers, and to that spiritual Kingdom or 
Church which these, together with their Head, vitally and organic- 
ally constitute in the unity of the Holy Ghost. 

12. Finally, in proportion as the instructed and developing 
human JDeing, in his progressive unfoldment, in one order or 
another, passes up through these various steps and stages of the 
spiritual life — and only in that proportion — does he obtain a cor- 
rect, a truly rational and real, insight into the nature, extent, and 
deadliness of sin, into the nature and need of an atonement, into 
the beauty of holiness, into the conscious blessedness of the life 
in God and of the life in the everlasting fellowship of God's 
children. 

To the foregoing theses every Christian teacher in the world 
can consistently and cordially subscribe. And whoever in his 
own experience has come to all the insights above mentioned, 
and lives in the light of them, is certainly to be called a Christian. 
But a Christian of the broadest and most radical character can- 
not rest at this point. He finds in these propositions no consistent 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 71 

and satisfying philosophy of three fundamental Christian truths, 
to wit: (i) the universality of human sin; (2) the sinlessness of 
Jesus Christ; and (3) the unity of that God into whose three 
divine names each Christian, in professing his faith, must be 
baptized. The great mass of thoughtful and earnest Christians, 
therefore, reach, and in all past Christian centuries have reached, 
additional convictions and insights on these points. But here, 
as before, the law under which insight is gained is a law of pro- 
portion, a law which may be approximately expressed in the 
three following propositions : 

1. In proportion as the instructed and developing Christian 
learns to recognize the real solidarity of all naturally engendered 
human individuals, and their ideal solidarity in the one primal 
purpose and plan of the Creator to constitute them together one 
vitally interwoven, organic species or form of divine Self-mani- 
festation, in like proportion does he come to the perception that a 
free and thoroughgoing self-closure of the earliest human be- 
ings to divine influence through sin could not fail to entail upon 
propagated human nature blindnesses and blights as far-reaching 
as the line of human generations — a self-centeredness of heart and 
will as hateful as hate and as deadly as death ; and that, philo- 
sophically considered, the universality of sin in the experience 
of all peoples and ages must find its deepest, its most rational, 
explanation in something resembling the biblical doctrine of a 
primeval fall of man. 

2. In proportion as the instructed and developing Christian 
comes to see in and back of all individual sin a universally trans- 
mitted, everywhere present race-characteristic — an inbred self- 
centeredness of will and affection which, so long as unchecked by 
outside powers, effectually disqualifies the individual and the race 
for their normal function of receiving and joyously manifesting 
forth the indwelling of Divinity — in like proportion does he come 



72 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

to the perception that the supreme need of fallen humanity can 
have been no other than a creative reopening of itself to the divine 
incoming, and that the incarnation, or, better, the Menschzverdiing, 
of God's Eternal Son, and the mission of the Comforter, consti- 
tute, as the New Testament teaches, the one all-sufficient and 
most gracious response of God to this necessity of his human 
creatures. 

3. In proportion as the instructed and developing Christian, 
pondering the mysteries of speculative Theism and the relieving 
disclosures of biblical revelation, comes to apprehend, on the one 
hand, the inconceivableness of a unipersonal Absolute, and on 
the other the triunity of the historic Self-manifestation of God 
in and through the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in like 
proportion will his strained and almost baffled mind find growing 
relief and restful delight and holy confidence in some approxima- 
tion, if not in full adhesion, to some form of the general Christian 
doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 

The above statements illustrate not only the growth of the 
Christian Consciousness, but also the fluency and growthfulness 
of the interrelations of the soul and God. 

A full presentation of the Philosophy of the Christian Con- 
sciousness would require the elaboration of at least the following 
chapters : 

CHAPTER I 

Of Consciousness in general, and the self-evident Validity of its Deliver- 
ances. 

CHAPTER II 

The Legitimacy, Indispensableness, and Scientific Value of the Testimony 
of Consciousness in the realm of subjective religious Activities and 
Results. 

CHAPTER III 

The Contents of the genuinely Christian Consciousness, 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION n 

CHAPTER IV 

Conceivability and Credibility of a concurrent divine and human witness- 
ing to an existing, or non-existing, personal Fellowship between the 
Soul and God. 

CHAPTER V 

The absolute verifying Force of the Testimony of the Christian Conscious- 
ness when individually possessed. 

CHAPTER VI 

The necessary Skepticism, or Liability to Skepticism, of all men not pos- 
sessed of the self-evidencing light of Consciousness touching personal 
Fellowship with God. 

CHAPTER VII 

The Christian Consciousness of the Individual as related to the larger 
Christian Consciousness of the true Church of Christ. 

PART III 

The Interrelations of God and Man as determined and ever rede- 
termined in the historic life of the World-Religion. 

The interrelations of God and humanity in history have never 
for two successive moments remained fixed and unaltered. Since 
their beginning the flow of God's Self-revelation and the flow of 
Man's Self-revelation have been incessant. V^ith each new heart- 
beat humanity itself becomes other than it was. Equally mutable 
and transmutable must be that vital relationship in which and 
under which the twain activities, the divine and human, endlessly 
persist. 

Whoever in his own personal consciousness has known the 
abnormal relationship of blind hostility to God, and now in his 
own consciousness knows the blessedness of an established and 
ever-growing fellowship with God, has little difflculty with the 
problems of humanity's religious history. His own childhood 
typifies to him the childhood of his race. His own debasing 
paganisms fully interpret to him the most debasing paganisms 



74 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

of mankind. Himself miraculously newborn of God, the miracu- 
lous birth at Bethlehem is more than credible. Himself possessor 
of the Holy Comforter, the spiritual history of the living Church 
would be to him a mystery but for its outstart from a world- 
historic Pentecost. 

Again, to such a man, philosophies of history that ignore or 
reject the divine factor are self-refuted in advance. He sees that 
in proportion as the divine coefficient is overlooked the human is 
misconceived and distorted. History being the result of divine 
activity in and through men, and at the same time of men's 
activity in and through Deity, a consistently atheistic philosophy 
of history is as little conceivable as is a consistently ananthroj^Lsdc 

The normal interrelations of God and man being found only 
in those souls in whom the divine-human fellowship and life have 
been reestablished, it is only natural that the true knowledge of 
these interrelations is found only with these souls and with those 
whom they have instructed. Furthermore, it is only natural that 
all those who hold this knowledge merely as a matter of instruc- 
tion should hold it as they hold other matters of human testimony ; 
that is, not as genuine knowledge, but at best only as a theoretical 
and more or less questionable belief. 

The genuine knowledge of the normal divine and human rela- 
tionship is alone with them that stand in it, and stand in it con- 
sciously. The majority of them are dwelling in the heavenly 
places. Even with these it is a growing knowledge. 

From the days of the God-man the World-Religion has been 
teaching that there has been in the progress of history a certain 
succession of exceptionally important modifications in the Inter- 
relations of God and humanity. As this teaching constitutes 
the philosophy of humanity's history according to the World- 
Religion, it here requires attention. The following enumeration 
presents the view, not only as it is in itself, but also as it stands 



AND THE WORLD-RELIGION 75 

related to a larger conception of the total history of the moral 
universe : 

I. The absolutely primal Interrelations of God and moral 
creatures anterior to all creaturely self-revelation in consciously 
and purposely good or evil self-assertion. (Monergistically and 
divinely determined. Not so much prehistoric as history- 
initiating. ) 

IL These Interrelations as modified in a prehuman world-aeon, 
partly by creaturely self-revelation in consciously and purposely 
good and evil self-assertion, and partly by new forms of divine 
self-revelation appropriate to these creaturely self-revelations in 
good and evil. (So conceived, the new interrelations would have 
to be described as synergistically determined. Moreover, the 
creaturely contribution toward their determination would have to 
be conceived of as antithetically dual, that of evil creaturely 
coefficients and that of the good.) 

III. These Interrelations as modified by the introduction of 
two race-bearing and race-representing creatures, of more than 
angelic possibilities, parents of unknown millions of moral 
creatures, proprietors of a world requiring ages for its roughest 
exploration, bearers of a divine image that was capable of becom- 
ing endlessly more divine, types and progenitors of a Seed in 
whom all the fullness of the Godhead should bodily dwell. Here, 
anterior to any conscious Godward self-revelation of these human 
creatures, we have the earliest interrelations of God and humanity. 
(As before, in the earlier beginning, they were divinely deter- 
mined, independent of any agency of the newly created; but that 
they were divinely determined irrespective of earlier and contem- 
porary non-human moral creatures and of the contribution of 
these to the quality and possibilities of the moral universe at the 
time is theistically unthinkable.) 

IV. The same Interrelations as modified in the pre-Christian 



^(i . THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 

'-^^orld-seon partly by human self-revelation in consciously and 
purposely good and evil self-assertion, and partly by new forms 
of divine self-revelation appropriate to these human self-revela- 
tions in good and evil. (Increased complexity of coefficients, 
the human self-revelation both in evil and in good having been 
initially facilitated by prehuman and extrahuman creaturely 
agency.) 

V. The same Interrelations as modified by the incarnation of 
the Son of God and the indivination of the Son of man. (Increas- 
ing complexity of coefficients, even the divine factor manifest- 
ing a trinally self-differentiated activity.) 

VI. The same Interrelations as modified by the progressive 
incorporation of the Spirit of the God-man in believing humanity 
in earthly places, and the progressive excorporation of believing 
humanity in the same Spirit into the heavenly places. (Present 
post- Pentecostal world-aeon. Coefficients : divine, hypostatic 
and monontologic ; theanthropic ; angelic, beneficent and malefi- 
cent; human, evil and good — each creaturely class, moreover, in 
"numbers without number.") 

VII. The same Interrelations as yet to be remodified at the 
close of the present world-seon, when in the presence of the whole 
moral universe the reembodied race of God-imaging men, com- 
plete in all its members and now forever past all further self- 
multiplication, shall stand for the first time self-revealed in and 
before its self-revealed Author, and both, conscious of a oneness 
which neither life nor death eternal can destroy, face the unpic- 
turable experiences of the endless beyond. 

To us, catechumens in the World-Religion, this Philosophy of 
World-history seems difficult and high. Be it so. But a few 
more moons and we may study it under larger horizons, in the 
manifest presence of Him who himself was in the beginning, is 
now, and ever shall be, world without end. 



APPENDIX 



I, The Nature and Naturalness of Religion 
II. A Quest of the Perfect Religion 
III. Ancient Conceptions of the Universe 



I. THE NATURE AND NATURALNESS OF RELIGION 

Question i. — What is religion considered as to its essence or nature? 

Answer. — First of all, let it be noted that in all religious phenomena man 
is the subject. Everywhere he it is that believes, he it is that feels, he it 
is that acts. However much religion may have to do with divine beings, 
it is never predicated of them. No man of any faith ever says, "My god is 
religious." By the term "religion" we always mean something of which 
man is the proper and the only proper subject. 

Again, scrutinizing religious activities closety, we find that none of them 
properly terminate in or upon their subject; in every sj'^stem they presup- 
pose an object toward which they are directed. All religions assume the 
existence of one or more personal beings related to men and capable of 
being influenced by the personal bearing of men toward them. Every 
worshiper believes that the object of his worship is, and that he is the 
rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Usually he believes not merely 
in the existence and in the present and future influence of his god, but 
also in certain noteworthy events of the past by which that god is per- 
sonally related to universal, national, or tribal history, or it may be to the 
history of tlie worshiper himself; and thus he believes that at sundry times, 
and in divers manners, his god has revealed himself. 

Now a man may have many such objects of worship, or only one; he 
may believe them to be most gracious or most wrathful; he may love 
them, or fear them, or hate them. No one of these things affects the fun- 
damental fact that all his religious activities presuppose some definite 
religious belief, and are largely determined as to their character by the 
character of that belief. This, then, we will call the first necessary pre- 
supposition of religion — the idea of a personality or of personalities en- 
titled to worship ; the belief in his or their existence. Let us call it the 
intellectual presupposition. 

Looking into the matter still further, one soon perceives that all re- 
ligious acts involve the emotional and moral nature. The religious and 
irreligious are alike prompted in their activities by motives and states of 
heart of which they consciously predicate moral qualities. Moreover, 
when one considers that in all religions the great end of religious activi- 
ties is to please the divinity worshiped, and that no divinity could feel 

79 



8o APPENDIX 

pleased with a worship either devoid of all feeling, or extorted in any way 
against the inclination of the worshiper, it is manifest that the state of the 
sensibilities presupposed in all normal religious action must be a volun- 
tarily cherished one. Indeed, in order to effect a religious act in a normal 
manner, it may not be one of cherished aversion — it must be the state 
known as loving loyalty and trust. It has, therefore, in any case, an 
ethical character. Let us call this the ethical presupposition of all religion. 

So far, then, we find nothing but presuppositions. Beliefs, right or 
wrong, do not constitute religion. They simply render it possible. I may 
believe in a god or in a million of them, but if I stop with the belief, it is 
impossible to predicate religion of me. This belief simply prepares me for 
the great life-test, whether I will be religious or not. I shall show myself 
religious or not according as I live up to my belief or fail to do so. Hence 
articles, creeds, confessions, theologic dogmas of any kind, are not re- 
ligion ; neither is the assent which men may give to them. Precisely so are 
we to distinguish between the feeling which men antecedently cherish 
toward an object of worship and their worship itself. The inclination to 
religion is not religion. 

Let us come, then, to the acts themselves. Does religion, the essence 
of religion, consist in those acts of men which are called religious? Does 
it consist in prayers, preachings, vows, sacrifices, penances, shrine-building, 
the reading of holy books, fastings, scourgings, washings, processions, 
pilgrimages, etc. ? Here again the answer must be, No. These acts are all 
outward. The man of deranged intellect, the blasphemer, the atheist, can 
go through them all. The hypocrite may perform every one of them for 
gain, the scoffer for sport. By themselves they are empty forms, possess- 
ing no virtue or meaning. Religious acts are not religion, but expressions 
of religion, manifestations of its presence, effects of its power. The tide 
should never be mistaken for attractional force of the moon. 

But if religion is something human, a characteristic of man as a spiritual 
being, yet consists neither in religious beliefs, nor in religious feelings, 
nor in religious acts, what can it be? How shall we define it as to its real 
essential nature? After the foregoing analysis we are better prepared to 
answer this question. And first, though it may not consist in technical re- 
ligious acts, it is something active, not passive. It is not a state of the 
man. Being religious is not suffering something, but doing something. 
It is true, we have no one active verb exactly expressing the full idea of 
religion, as, for example, I relige; but all that we do have expressive of 
the separate elements of religion, such as, I worship, I adore, I love and 



APPENDIX 8i 

serve God, I confess and deplore my sins, etc., plainly express that re- 
ligion is something that the man does, not something that is done to him. 
Were it otherwise he would be the object instead of the subject of re- 
ligion. 

Again, this action is an intelligent and free action. It is not some blind 
necessary function, like the organic action of the heart and brain. No 
man is religious without knowing it, without meaning, choosing, prefer- 
ring to be. Religion is an intelligent and free bearing^ of the intelligent 
and free man. 

Again, this bearing is distinguished from other intelligent and free 
bearings by its object. Every active bearing of man has reference to 
some object. Over against this stands the man, and his total personal 
action with reference to it constitutes his active bearing toward said 
object. Religion is a man's active bearing over against the divine being 
or beings in whose existence he believes. 

Summing up, then, we may define religion as a man's total personal 
bearing with respect to his god, or gods. It presupposes, first, the idea 
of a god, or of gods, and a belief in his or their existence. This is the 
intellectual presupposition. Second, religion presupposes a desire and in- 
tent favorably to affect the divinity or divinities acknowledged, partly by 
deprecating his or their displeasure, partly by rendering the acceptable 
service which he, or they, are supposed rightfully to claim. This is the 
ethical presupposition. Now the intellectual presupposition determines 
the truth or falsity of any religion, the ethical its genuineness or spuri- 
ousness. True religion is necessarily conditioned upon true conceptions and 
beliefs respecting the object of worship. These differ so greatly that not 
all can be true. False religion is a religion whose intellectual presup- 
positions are false; that is, whose supposed object or objects of worship 
have no actual counterpart in the world of real existenc^. It follows that 
every man's religion is relatively true or false, according as his concep- 
tions and beliefs with respect to the object of religion agree or disagree 
with reality. In like manner a man's religion is genuine, or not, according 
as he desires and intends it to meet the admitted claims of his divinity. 
If utterly destitute of such desire and intent, he is non-religious ; if actuated 
by a contrary desire and intent, he is positively irreligious. If in the utter 



* The term "bearing" seems the best obtainable to express the real thing. Bearing ex- 
presses its essential activity without implying that it consists in definite outward acts. 

It also implies that habitualness and continuity which properly belong to the idea of reli- ^^ 

gion, both in the individual person and in a social aggregate. / \ 



82 APPENDIX 

absence of such feeling he still performs religious acts, he is a formalist, 
usually also a hypocrite. If under the influence of a directly opposite feel- 
ing he still performs religious acts, he is positively sacrilegious. Genuinely 
religious in any faith is he only who earnestly desires, and according to 
his light endeavors, to please the god he worships. 

Finally, religion ultimates in acts. All religious acts are reducible to 
two classes. The one class includes all acts prompted by man's sense of 
absolute dependence; the other, all acts prompted by his sense of absolute 
obligation. To the former belong all acts of prayer so far as these are 
-appeals for divine help. To the latter belong all acts of service intended 
as a due response to a divine requirement. In the one class, man's con- 
sciousness of weakness finds expression ; in the other, his consciousness of 
free yet responsible personal energy. Both are legitimate, equally so; and 
hence in well-balanced religion neither class will predominate over and 
suppress the other. 

Ques. 2. — In order, then, to absolutely normal religion, what three things 
are indispensably necessary? 

Ans. — First, it must be true; that is, the intellectual conceptions and 
beliefs of the subject respecting the object of religion must, so far as they 
go, correspond with reality. Second, it must be genuine ; that is, must 
be prompted and attended by a sincere desire to satisfy said object, or 
objects. Thirdly, it must be well balanced in its outward expression, 
service neither suppressing prayer, nor prayer service. A hearing over 
against the divine, true in its intellectual presupposition, genuine in its 
ethical presupposition, complete and symmetrical in its forms of expres- 
sion, is entitled to the name of absolutely normal religion. In the perfect 
love of the perfect God is found the flower and perfection of such re- 
ligion. It presupposes a true knowledge, a right impulse, and issues in a 
well-balanced expression toward God and man. 

Ques. 3. — What does the foregoing psychological analysis further show? 

Ans. — The naturalness of religion in some form, and its needfulness. 
In every man there is a twofold consciousness : a consciousness of de- 
pendence and a consciousness of spontaneous energy. The one prompts 
to self-surrender, the other to self-assertion. This peculiarity exists, if 
not before, at least independent of, the earliest perceptions of any difl^er- 
ence in ethical quality between the two forms of action, or between dif- 
ferent exercises in the same form under difi^erent circumstances. But the 



APPENDIX 83' 

moment conscience pronounces its uncompromising moral judgment upon 
the two, or upon the differing expressions of the two, this antagonism be- 
comes all the deeper and more intense. From the distraught subject it 
often extorts the anguished cry, "O wretched man that I am, who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death?" There is thus in the most 
radical impulses of human nature. a constitutional conflict. Self, the con- 
sciously free and active personality, spontaneously struggles to assert 
itself, to realize its will, to achieve its highest satisfaction. On the other 
hand, this same self-asserting Ego not only finds itself actually antagonized 
by beings and powers outside itself, but also discovers that its personal 
power is so limited and conditioned that it can realize its own will, and 
achieve its coveted satisfaction, only by the aid of this greater power, or 
sum of powers, outside itself. In this deepest and most central antinomy 
of human consciousness religion has its psychological basis, its living root. 
Viewed with respect to human nature alone, that is, apart from the author, 
sustainer, and governor of that nature, religion grows out of the in- 
stinctive effort of the soul to reconcile its own antagonistic impulses. 
The true reconciliation is found in such a self -surrendering identification of 
the self-asserting soul with the superior objective power as at once freely 
and fully satisfies its consciousness of dependence and also enables it, 
through that very identification, to actualize its henceforth highest will 
and achieve its henceforth highest satisfaction. 

Qucs. 4. — Wherein, at this point, is the superiority of the World-Religion 
seen? 

Ans. — In this, that in it alone an all-perfect Object is so related to each 
Subject that the described and universally needed reconciliation can be 
made effectual. The true reconciliation just described is preeminently 
the Christian conception of religion. It is expressed in what Jesus says 
about first finding life by losing it. Had this deep teaching been first 
propounded by some heathen sage, our modern expounders of the philos- 
ophy of religion might well have lauded his profundity. The same idea 
is to a good degree shared by all thoroughly earnest monotheistic religion- 
ists. In experience these practically approach the full reconciliation of 
their naturally antagonistic impulses in proportion to their actual self- 
identification with that infinite personality on whom they feel their de- 
pendence, and who has absolute control over all that limits and embar- 
rasses their normal, that is, their pious, self-assertion. That polytheists 
never attain it finds its philosophic explanation in three considerations: 



84 APPENDIX 

(i) No one' of their gods possessing infinite pow^r and -absolute control 
over all things, it is plain that no one of them can give to a self-surrender- 
ing soul an unlimited freedom of self-assertion. Were we, therefore, to 
grant the existence of all the gods of the polytheistic peoples just as they 
are conceived by their worshipers, we should still see, both in their in- 
dividual finiteness and in their partial and conflicting claims and jurisdic- 
tions, a plain reason for the failure of all polytheistic religion to reconcile 
the native antagonism found in universal human consciousness. Still 
clearer is the case to all who hold that such gods are purely imaginary ; 
that, being mere nonentities, they control none of the objective powers 
which oppose the worshiper's self-assertion. (2) Despairing of such 
reconciliation, many of these religionists have seen no road to peace and 
blessedness save in the utter suppression of the consciousness of depend- 
ence with all its impulses to self-surrender. As this, however, is in practice 
psychologically impossible, the result has been forms of religion in which 
the man is more prominent than the god, in which work overrides worship, 
and a stoical contempt and disregard of human limitations take the place of 
loyal and filial self-surrender. (3) Others, painfully convinced of the 
futility of seeking their supreme good in this direction, try the opposite 
road, and hope by an absolute suppression of self-activity, and by an 
absolute self-surrender to superior powers, to find the rest and peace of a 
perfect life. In pantheistic religions this idea is carried to such an ex- 
treme that their adherents expect full blessedness only in, and by means 
of, a personal reabsorption into the impersonal Absolute. Both these ideas 
being utterly at war with the very nature of the soul, in which nature the 
ins-tinct of self-assertion and the consciousness of self-insufficiency are 
equally indestructible, it is not strange that those who act upon them 
fail of finding inward peace and rest and blessedness. 

Ques. 5. — How does religious activity tend to modify itself? 

Ans. — The foregoing view of the psychology of religion would still be 
very defective were it to overlook the reflex influence of the religious 
activity upon the soul, and thus in turn upon itself. For while in the 
natural order of thought religious conceptions, beliefs, feelings, and 
purposes precede and shape that Godward bearing of the soul which we 
style religion, it is equally true that in fact the Godward bearing itself 
reacts upon these antecedents, modifying them in various important re- 
spects. For example, let us suppose that a soul has just received its first 
distinct conception of a rightful object of worship, and experienced the 



APPENDIX 85 

first promptings of feeling to attempt the securement of his favor. Sup- 
pose that under this prompting he sincerely and earnestly attempts what 
he supposes to be a normal bearing over against this being, and soon after 
experiences what are to him encouraging tokens that his service or 
prayer is acceptable. This experience immediately affects his conception 
of the god. The element of benignity in that conception at once becomes 
more prominent and lustrous. Then, as by similar experiences in his re- 
ligious life he practically tests his divinity's faithfulness or unfaithfulness, 
his compassion or cruelty, his longsuffering or pettishness, the worshiper's 
conception takes on greater and greater definiteness, until at length he 
comes to feel intimately acquainted with the being who at first was to 
him little more than a mere abstract idea. Especially is this the case 
where the worshiper discovers such a degree of uniformity in what he 
regards as manifestations of his divinity's favor or disfavor as enables 
him to draw confident conclusions respecting his character. Where this is 
not the case the influence of religious activity may be to confuse and 
weaken a conception which at an earlier time was clear and confidently 
believed in by the individual. It is, indeed, conceivable that by being re- 
ligious a man should become an atheist. For if, in response to long- 
continued efforts to observe a normal bearing over against his god, he 
experiences nothing which he can recognize as a decisive manifestation of 
divine favor or disfavor, wrath or love, he may finally arrive at the con- 
clusion that-his supposed god can do him neither harm nor good, yea, 
that he is a mere phantasm of his own imagining. Thus the practice of 
religion may not only modify a man's original conception of the proper 
object of worship, but may also on the one hand confirm, or on the other 
undermine, his faith in the reality of that object. 

A similar reflex influence exerted by religion upon its ethical presupposi- 
tion should here be noted. The disposition to be religious is affected by 
being religious. In a normal religious activity it is easy to see that this 
disposition must be constantly intensified, and this in two ways. First, by 
the law of habit, which applies to the sensibilities and will, as strongly 
as to any other powers of man ; and secondly, in virtue of the desirable 
results of normal religious activit3^ This beneficent law of progressive 
intensification, however, renders it possible for a man to grow irreligious 
by the practice of religion. For if his religion is false, and hence fruitless, 
as some forms of religion must be, this fruitlessness, continually disap- 
pointing and baffling, may also at length imbitter him, and thus induce a 
state of feeling so abnormal that he shall no longer even care to please 



86 APPENDIX 

his divinity. Indeed, this experience and this imbitterment may go so far 
that while still holding with unshaken intellectual confidence to the ex- 
istence of his god, the man may positively hate and insult him. Whether 
in a false religion this shall be the result of religious activity, or the atheism 
mentioned above, depends greatly, perhaps mainly, on the relative strength 
of the intellectual and emotional natures in the subject. If the intellectual 
predominate, the tendency will be toward atheism ; if the emotional, it 
will be toward impiety. 

Ques. 6. — In what ways may the religious activity be modified by an 
ideally perfect Object of religion? 

Ahs. — From the foregoing analysis it is evident that there are three 
ways in which an ideally perfect Object of religion may affect the bearing 
of his Subject : 

I, By affecting the presuppositions. When by an inner spiritual operation 
he clarifies and intensifies the intellectual presupposition, that is, the man's 
apprehension of God and duty, religious teachers call this "enlightenment." 
When the divine inworking thoroughly affects the emotional and ethical 
nature, the result is that change of spiritual feeling and purpose des- 
ignated by the term "regeneration," or new birth. 

- 2. The action of the Object of religion may coexist with that of the 
Subject in and along with his active bearing itself, and, so affect its char- 
acter and intensity. Christian, and nearly all other, theists hold to such a 
working of God in the worshiper, not only antecedently to illuminate and 
waken, but also thereafter to will and to do of his own good pleasure. 

3. The Object of religion may actively affect the expression or outward 
manifestations of religion: (a) by preceptively prescribing the forms and 
duties in and under which he desires to be worshiped; (b) by inclining 
the worshiper either by providential circumstances, or by his secret in- 
fluence upon the soul, to give manifestation to its religious activity pre- 
dominantly in this mode or in that. 

In an ideally perfect religion we should antecedently expect to find all 
the here described modes of divine inworking. 

Qties. 7. — How is the truth or reality of this interior presence and divine 
working conceived of in the highest form of the World-Religion? 

Ans. — As self-evidencing. "Hereby we know that he abideth in us 
by the Spirit that he hath given us." 



APPENDIX 87 

Ques. 8. — How does James Russell Lowell express the thought? 

Power more near my life than life itself — 
Or what seems life to us in sense immured — 
Even as the roots, shut in the darksome earth, 
Share in the tree-top's joyance, and conceive 
Of sunshine and wide air and winged things 

By sympathy of nature, so do I - 

Have evidence of thee so far above, 

Yet in and of me ! Rather thou the root 

Invisibly sustaining, hid in light, 

Not darkness or in darkness made by us. 

If sometimes I must hear good men debate 

Of other witness of thyself than thou, 

As if there needed any help of ours 

To nurse thy flickering life, that else must cease, 

Blown out, as 't were a candle, by men's breath. 

My soul shall not be taken in their snare, 

To change her inward surety for their doubt 

'Muffled from sight in formal robes of proof: 

While she can only feel herself through thee, 

1 fear not thy withdrawal ; more I fear, 

Seeing, to know thee not, hoodwinked with dreams 
Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, thou. 
Walking thy garden still, commun'st with men, 
Missed in the commonplace of miracle. 

— Closing lines of "The Cathedral." 



Ques. 9. — What says Whittier of it, in the lines entitled "Our Master" ? 

Immortal love, forever full. 

Forever flowing free. 
Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never-ebbing sea ! 

In joy of inward peace, or sense 

Of sorrow over sin, 
He is his own best evidence, 

His witness is within. 



88 APPENDIX 

II. A QUEST OF THE PERFECT RELIGION 

One day, years ago, as I was walking up one of the main streets of 
Tokyo, I encountered an experience not soon to be forgotten. My com- 
panion, who was the American minister to the Mikado's court, was 
pointing out to me at a considerable distance a large hall, called the 
Meiji Kuaido, and explaining that though now belonging to the govern- 
ment, it was originally built in a spirit of opposition to Christian missions 
and was designed to be a kind of headquarters for all who wished to reha- 
bilitate the old religions, or in any way to oppose the spread of the 
Christian faith. While he was narrating some incidents connected with 
it we came nearer and nearer, but soon found our further progress blocked 
by an altogether unprecedented crowd of people, evidently made up of the 
most diverse nationalities. It filled not only the approaches to the build- 
ing, but also the whole street for some distance in front and on either 
side. Upon inquiry we learned that a convention of quite unusual in- 
terest was in progress and that all these people whom the building could 
not contain were waiting to learn what they could of the progress of the 
deliberations within. One man kindly showed us a copy of the call under 
which the assembly had been brought together. At its top I read these 
words : "World's Convention for the Definition and Promulgation of a 
Perfect and Universal Religion." The provisions under which the dele- 
gates were to be appointed, and the Convention organized, were carefully 
drawn and admirably adapted to secure a most weighty and representa- 
tive body. Nearly every religion and sect I had ever heard of — except the 
Christian — was named and provided for. Of course I was at once in- 
tensely interested to see so rare a body — the first of its kind in the history 
of the world. But the crowd was so dense I was almost in despair. For- 
tunately, in our extremity two stout policemen recognized my companion, 
and, knowing his ambassadorial character, undertook to make a way for 
us and to bring us into the hall. The struggle was long and severe, but at 
last our faithful guides succeeded in edging us into an overcrowded bal- 
cony to a standing place from which nearly the whole body of the dele- 
gates could be seen. Never can I forget that many-hued and strangely 
clad assembly. Nearly every delegation had some sacred banner, or other 
symbol, by which it might be distinguished. In the center of the hall was 
the yellow silken banner of the Chinese Dragon. On the left I saw the 
crescent of Islam ; on the right the streamers of the Grand Lama of Tibet. 
Not far away was the seven-storied sacred umbrella of Burmah, and be- 



APPENDIX 89 

yond it the gaudy feather-work of a dusky delegation from Ashantee. In 
one corner I even thought I recognized the totem of one of our Indian 
tribes of Alaska. 

On the program there were five questions, each evidently framed with 
a view to make its discussion and answer contribute toward the common 
end, the definition of a perfect and universal religion. The first read as 
follows : "Can there be more than one perfect religion ?" The opening 
of the discussion of this had been assigned to a great Buddhist teacher 
from Ceylon. The second question, to be opened by a Mohammedan, was, 
"Wliat kind of an object of worship must a perfect religion present?" 
The third was assigned to a Taoist, and was thus formulated : "What 
must a perfect religion demand of, and promise to, the sincere worshiper?" 
The fourth, assigned to a Hindu pundit, was the following: "In what re- 
lation must the divine object and the human subject stand to each other 
-in a perfect religion?" The fifth and last question read: "By what cre- 
dentials shall a perfect religion, if ever found, be known ?" The honor 
and responsibility of opening this last and highest of the proposed dis- 
cussions was reserved to the official head of the Shinto priesthood of 
Japan, the highest representative of the ancestral faith of the empire. 

As soon as my friend and I could get our bearings, we were pleased 
to find that only one of the questions had been discussed and acted upon 
by the Convention before our arrival. We were told that the assembly 
had been opened by the president designated in the Call ; and that nothing 
on earth was ever more impressive than the three minutes of silent prayer 
which followed the uplifting of the chairman's hand and eye. After this 
there had been a brief address of welcome from the Committee of Ar- 
rangements, a few words of thanks from the president in response ; then 
a short opening address by the president, and the introduction of the 
distinguished Buddhist representative from Ceylon, who was to discuss the 
question, "Can there be more than one perfect religion?" To a Buddhist, 
there could be, of course, but one answer to this question, and that a 
negative. But he argued it — :as our informants told us — with wonderful 
tact as well as power. He kept the qualification "perfect" so prominently 
before his hearers' minds that however accustomed any of them might 
be to think and say that there may be and are many good religions, none 
could fail to see that of perfect religions there could be but one. He also 
carefully abstained from identifying his own system with the perfect 
religion, and thus avoided the mistake of exciting the jealousy of rival 
religionists. So complete had been his success, that after a short discus- 



9b APPENDIX 

sion in which several very diverse speakers participated, a venerable 
Parsee had moved, and just before our arrival the Convention had unani- 
mously adopted, the following resolution : "Resolved, That in the opinion 
of this World's Convention there can be but one perfect religion." 

While we were getting hold of these facts we lost the president's in- 
troduction of the second preappointed speaker. We soon learned, how- 
ever, that he was the senior moulvie of the great Mohammedan University 
at Cairo, a school of Islam in which there are all the time about ten 
thousand students in preparation for the duties of public religious teachers 
and chanters of prayers. His piercing eye and snow-white beard and 
vigorous frame would have made him anywhere a man of mark. Seated 
after his manner of teaching in the mosque upon a low bamboo frame, 
clad in his official robe, he looked like a resurrected Old Testament 
prophet — an Isaiah in living form before us. At first I wondered if he 
would be able to speak to so modern a question as the one assigned him — 
"What kind of an object of worship must a perfect religion present?" 

Time would fail me were I to attempt to report with any fullness his 
rhythmic speech. It was Oriental through and through — quaint, poetic, full 
of apothegms, proverbs, parables — but it conclusively answered the ques- 
tion. He made even the feather-decked gri-gri worshipers of Western 
Africa see that a god who knows much about his worshiper, and can do 
great things for him, is more perfect than a god who knows little and 
can do but little. Then arguing up and up, he made it plain to every 
intelligence that a perfect religion necessarily demands a god possessing all 
knowledge and all power. It becomes a perfect religion only by present- 
ing to the worshiper, as the supreme object of obedience, love and service, 
a perfect being. He showed also that perfection in an object of worship 
required that it be a living object, that it have intelligence, rational feel- 
ings, and purposes — in a word, that it possess real and complete person- 
ality. It must be possible to address him as a personality. He needs to 
be in evqry place, to be before all things, in all things, above all things. 
Limit him in any respect and the religion you present becomes less than 
perfect. 

This was the thought stripped of all its weird and Oriental adornments. 
But as he expanded and enforced it his eye kindled and his chantlike 
speech rose and fell, and rose and fell, until we hardly knew whether we 
were in the body or out of the body, so wondrous was the spell where- 
with he had bound us. 

He was followed by an eloquent representative of the Brahmo Soma), 



APPENDIX 91 

and he in turn by a Persian Babist, both of whom argued in the same 
line with such effect, that when a picturesquely turbaned representative of 
the reHgion of the Sikhs gained the floor and moved that it be the sense 
of the Convention that a perfect religion must present a perfect god, the 
whole vast assembly was found to be a unit in affirming this grand 
declaration. 

Next, of course, came the third question : "What must a perfect re- 
ligion demand of the sincere worshiper, and what must it promise to him?" 
To open its discussion the appointed Taoist teacher was politely intro- 
duced. As his noble form advanced quietly to the front of the platform 
in the costume of a Chinese mandarin of the highest rank, it was at once 
evident that the better side of Taoism was to be represented — the ideas 
of the Tao-teh-king, and not the superstition and jugglery of modern 
popular Taoism. 

He began by saying that it seemed proper for him to start out from the 
point where the preceding discussion had stopped, the Convention having 
already voted that there could be but one perfect religion, and that this 
religion in order to be perfect must present a perfect object of worship. 
With both of these propositions he said he was in full accord, provided 
only that it be constantly borne in mind that the whole discussion related 
to a purely abstract or hypothetical question. 

"Now," said he, "if a man really had a perfect object of worship, it is 
plain that his duty toward it would be very different from that he owes to 
any of those finite and limited and imperfect divinities which we and our 
fathers have been accustomed to worship. Our duties to these, and their 
duties to us, are more analogous to our duty to observe courtesy toward 
our fellowmen and kindness toward those below us. The moment we 
picture to ourselves a perfect God, the maker, upholder and governor of all 
beings. Lord even of the celestial and terrestrial spirits whom we are in 
the habit of worshiping, that moment we see that the worship of such a 
being would of necessity be something very different. As giver of all our 
powers and possibilities, he could justly demand that w^e employ them all 
for the accomplishment of the purpose for which he gave them. Indeed, 
were he a perfectly rational being, it would seem impossible that he 
should require less. 

"On the other hand, such a being would of necessity possess both the 
power and the inclination to give to his sincere worshiper the perfect fruit 
of genuine piety. This can be nothing less than perfect virtue, and even 
exquisite delight in virtue. In a perfect piety all self-conflict, all internal 



92 APPENDIX 

resistance to good, all self-will must be absolutely and totally eliminated. 
All fear — even of that perfect Being — would have to be absent; nay, it 
would have to be transmuted into eager unintermittent love. On the other 
hand, how unutterably would a perfect object of worship love and bless 
^ perfectly sincere worshiper !" 

After many other touching words, particularly upon the woeful con- 
trast between the ideal and the actual in life, and upon the arduousness 
of the struggle for virtue under every religion, he closed by submitting 
the following proposition for the further consideration of the Convention : 
"Resolved, That a perfect religion will have to demand of man a perfect 
surrender of will and life to a perfect object of worship, and will have to 
promise him a perfect freedom and satisfaction in the life of goodness." 

ASuii from Ispahan, a Theosophist from Bombay, and various other 
speakers followed, all very nearly agreeing with the first, but some of them 
preferring a different wording of the resolution. Various amendments 
were proposed and discussed, until at length the following substitute was 
offered : "Resolved, That if a perfect religion were possible to imperfect 
men, it would require of the worshiper a perfect devotion to a perfect god, 
and would demand of the perfect god a perfect ultimate beatification of 
the worshiper." This was unanimously and even enthusiastically adopted. 

Question four was now in order. The president rose and said : "The 
fourth question reads as follows: Tn what relation must the divine object 
and the human subject stand to each other in a perfect religion?' The 
discussion of this question is to be opened by one who has himself ofttimes 
been the recipient of divine worship, and who represents an ancient and 
powerful priesthood believed by millions to be a real embodiment of the 
one divine and eternal Spirit. I have the honor to present to the Conven- 
tion the venerated head of all the sacred houses of the Brahmans in the 
holy city of Benares." 

Calm as his own imposing religion, yet keener than any who had pre- 
ceded him, the Hindu addressed himself to his allotted task. For twenty 
minutes he held every eye and commanded every mind. How shall I give 
you any conception of that captivating discourse? The following is but 
the barest thread to intimate the great truths touched upon by his master 
hand. 

He began by saying that some personal relationship between the 
worshiper and the worshiped was necessarily involved in the very idea of 
worship. In this act the worshiper is thinking of the object of his wor- 
ship, otherwise he is not worshiping. So the being worshiped is thinking 



APPENDIX 93 

of his worshiper, otherwise he is not receiving the worship. Here, then, is 
mutual simultaneous thought. Each has a place in the consciousness of 
the other. To this extent they possess a common consciousness. In this 
fellowship of mutual thought they are mutually related ; by it they are 
vitalh' and personally connected. 

This connection may, of course, be of two kinds. If the god is angry 
with his worshiper, or the worshiper with his god, the relationship is one 
of hatred and antagonism. If, on the other hand, it is a relation of mutual 
incHnation — the man sincerely seeking to please his god, and the god 
sincerely seeking to bless his worshiper — it is, of course, a* relationship of 
amity, of good fellowship, of mutual love. But all religions agree that 
the first of these relationship^, that of enmity and estrangement, is abnor- 
mal, one which ought not to be. All religions aim to remove or to trans- 
form such a relationship wherever it exists. It is, therefore, plain that 
the perfect religion, if there be one, must require and make the personal 
relationship between the worshiper and the worshiped a relation of mutual 
benevolence — a relation of mutual love. Nowhere can there be a perfect 
religion if the man do not sincerely love his god, and if the god do not 
sincerely love his worshiper. 

Here the speaker raised a most interesting question as to degree. To 
what extent ought this love to go? There could be but one answer. In a 
perfect religion the love of the worshiper for the worshiped must, of 
course, be the strongest possible, particularly as the worshiped is himself 
all-perfect, and hence all-worthy of this love. So, on the other hand, the 
love of the worshiped toward the worshiper ought to be the very strongest 
possible. What, then, is the strongest possible love which the divine can 
bear to the human and the human to the divine ? 

I cannot enough regret that my limits compel me to suppress his dis- 
cussion of this pregnant question. I can only say that from point to point 
he carried the convictions of his vast audience until he had triumphantly 
demonstrated three far-reaching propositions: (i) That the ever higher 
and more perfect devotion of a worshiper can never reach its supreme 
intensity until he is ready, and even desirous, to merge his very will and 
life and being in the will and life and being of the all-perfect object of his 
worship. (2) That the gracious disposition of the object worshiped toward 
the worshiper can never reach its supreme intensity until the worshiped 
being is ready, and desirous, to descend from the divine form and mode 
of being and, in an abandon of compassionate love, take on the form 
and the limitations of his human worshiper. (3) That in a perfect re- 



94 APPENDIX 

ligion the human subject and the divine object must be set in such rela- 
tions that it shall be possible for God to become a partaker of human 
nature, and for man in some sense to become a partaker of the divine 
nature. 

Profound was the silence which followed this wonderful discourse. 
The first to break it was a professor in the Imperial University of Tokyo, 
a man who, though of European birth, was in complete sympathy with the 
purposes of the Convention. After highly complimenting the Brahman 
speaker, he said that he himself had long been an admiring student of 
India's sacred books. With the permission of the Convention he would 
like to recite a few lines from one of them, the Isa Upanishad, which 
seemed to him admirably to express the true relation subsisting between 
the worshiping soul and the Infinite. He then gave the following: 

Whate'er exists within this universe 
Is all to be regarded as enveloped 
By the great Lord, as if wrapped in a vesture. 
There is one only being who exists 
Unmoved, yet moving swifter than the mind ; 
Who far outstrips the senses, tho' as gods 
They strive to reach him ; who himself at rest 
Transcends the fleetest flight of other beings ; 
Who like the air supports all vital action. 
He moves, yet moves not; he is far, yet near; 
He is within this universe. Whoe'er beholds 
All living creatures as in him, and him — 
The Universal Spirit — as in all. 
Henceforth regards no creature with contempt. 

"Now here," continued the professor, "here we have the true conception 
admirably expressed. Because the Universal Spirit is in all things, even 
in the worshiper, and on the other hand all things, even the worshiper, 
are in this Universal Spirit, it is more than possible — it is inevitable — that 
the divine should have participancy in the human and the human in the 
divine. Few of the great religions of the world have failed to recognize 
in some way this basal truth. Even the Shamans of the barbarous tribes 
claim to exercise divine powers only when personally possessed of divine 
spirits. In Tibet the faithful see in the distinguished head of their hier- 
archy the Dalai Lama — with whose presence we to-day are honoredi — 
a true divine incarnation. For ages here in Japan the sacred person of the 



APPENDIX 95 

Mikado has been recognized as a god in human form. The founders of 
nearly all great religions and states have been held to be descendants, or 
impersonations, of the gods. In like manner the apotheosis of dying em- 
perors, Roman and other, shows how natural is the faith that good and 
great men can take on the nature and the life divine. Ask India's hun- 
dreds of millions. They all affirm that every human being may aspire to 
ultimate and absolute identification with God. The even more numerous 
followers of the Buddha hold that, in his enlightenment, Sakya Muni was 
far superior to any god. Now, if such are the conceptions of the actual 
religions, how certain is it that the ideal, the perfect religion, must provide 
a recognition of them ! I move you, Mr. President, that the propositions 
of our Brahman orator from Benares be adopted as the voice of this 
Convention." 

No speaker appearing in the negative, the motion was put and carried 
without dissent. 

Thus, with astonishing unanimity, the assembly had reached the final 
question upon the program, "By what credentials shall a perfect religion 
be known ?" 

Intenser than ever grew the interest of the delegates. On the answer 
to this question hung all their hopes as to any practically useful outcome 
from the holding of this great Ecumenical Convention. Doubly intense 
was the interest of the onlooking Japanese, for here, in the presence of 
the world's religions, the highest and most authoritative religious voice 
of their ow^n empire was now to be heard. Breathless was the entire 
throng as the speaker began : 

"Hail to the Supreme Spirit of Truth. Praise to the Kami of kamis — 
the living essence of the ever-lasting, ever-living Light. 

"Why are we here, brothers from all climes, why are we here in serious 
search for the one true and perfect Way? It is because He, in whom 
are all things, and who is in all things — as sang that Hindu poet — is 
yearning with ineffable afifection to be known of us, his earthly offspring, 
and to know us as his own. Onh^ lately have I learned this secret. Only 
since my invitation to address this World's Convention have mj^ eyes been 
opened to the blessed truth. Never before had I been led to meditate upon 
the necessary implications of a religion absolutely perfect. In prepara- 
tion for my question I was compelled thus to meditate. Scarce had I 
addressed myself to my task before I began to see what you have seen, 
and to lay down the propositions which you to-day in due succession have 
been laying down. I could not help discerning that there can be but one 



96 APPENDIX 

religion truly perfect; that a religion can never be perfect unless it present 
a perfect God; that no religion can be perfect which does not deliver 
man from sin and death and dower him with pure and everlasting blessed- 
ness. I could not help perceiving that no religion could ever claim per- 
fection in which any gulf is left unfilled between the worshiper and the 
object of his worship. Oppressed and almost overwhelmed by these great 
thoughts, convinced that there was no such perfect religion in existence, 
nor any credential by which it could be known, I was yesterday morning 
alone, in a favorite hermitage by the sounding sea, near Yokohama. The 
whole night I had passed in sleeplessness and fasting. No light had 
dawned upon my mind. To cool my fevered brain, I strolled upon the 
seashore up and down, and listened to the solemn beatings of the billows 
on the sand. 

"Here, in one of rhy turns, I fell in with a stranger — a sailor fresh from 
his ship. In conversation I quickly learned that he had followed the sea 
from early life, that he had been quite round the world, and had seen 
more wonders than any man it had ever been my fortune to meet. Long 
time we talked together of lands and peoples underneath the world and 
all around its great circumference. Repeatedly I was on the point of 
opening my heart to this plain man and of asking him whether in all his 
world-wide wanderings he had anywhere found a religion more perfect 
than that of our ancestors. Every time, however, I checked myself. I 
was confident that he would not long remain in ignorance of my character 
and office, and how could I, chief priest of my nation, betray to him such 
doubt as this my question would imply? I was too proud to place myself 
in such an attitude of personal inquiry. And yet perpetually this thought 
recurred : This man has seen cities and mountains and rivers and peoples 
which I have never seen, and I feel no humiliation in being a learner in 
these things — why hesitate to ascertain if in religion he may not equally 
be able to give fresh light and information? At last I broke my proud 
reserve, and said : 'You must have seen something of the chief religions 
of the whole world as well. Now, which among them all strikes you 
as the best?' 

" T have seen but one,' was the laconic reply. 

"'What mean you?' I rejoined. 'You have told me of a score of peo- 
ples and lands and cities whose temples you must have seen, and whose 
rites you must have witnessed.' 

" '^There is but one religion,' he repeated. 

" 'Explain,' I demanded of him again. 



APPENDIX 97 

" 'How many do you make ?' he said, evading my question. 

"I paused a moment. I was about to answer, 'At least a larger number 
than there are of different tribes and peoples,' but in my hesitation I was 
struck by the strange agreement between his enigmatic utterance and my 
own previous conclusion that there could be but one perfect religion. 
Someway I yielded to the impulse to mention the coincidence. 'Do you 
mean,' I added, 'that there can be but one religion worthy of the name?' 

"My sacrifice of pride had its reward. It won an answering confidence, 
and unsealed the stranger's lips. 

"'Have you time,' he said, 'to hear a sailor's story? More than sixty 
years ago I was born in a beautiful home hard by the base of our holy 
mountain, the Fusijama. This very evening I start to visit the scenes of 
my boyhood, after an absence of more than forty years. My father and 
mother were persons of deep piety, and from the first had dedicated me, 
as the firstborn, to the service of the gods. At an early age I was placed 
in 'the care of a community of priests who kept one of the chief shrines 
of my native province. Here I was to be trained up for the same holy 
priesthood. For some years I was delighted with my companions, with 
my tasks, and with my prospects. But at length, as I grew more and more 
mature, and as my meditations turned oftener upon the mysteries of the 
world and of life, an inexpressible sadness gradually mastered me. I 
shrank from the calling to which I had been destined. I said to myself, 
"How can I teach men the way of the gods when I know it not myself? 
How long have I yearned to find the way of peace and the way of virtue! 
How long have I cried unto all the kami of heaven and all the kami of 
earth to teach it me ! Yet even while I see the good I love that which is 
not good. I do myself the things which I condemn in others. I teach 
others to be truthful, but before an hour has passed I have lied to myself — 
have done or said what I had promised myself I would not. I love myself 
more than I love virtue, and then I hate myself because I love myself so 
well. I am at war within. O who shall deliver me, who can give me 
peace?" 

" 'As time passed on I became more and more the prey of this consum- 
ing melancholy. The time was at hand when my period of pupilage was to 
end and I was to be given the dignity of full admission: to the sacred 
priesthood. The night before the day appointed for the ceremony my 
agony was too great for human endurance. Under the friendly cover oi 
the darkness I fled from the sacred precincts of the temple, fled from 
the loving parents and friends who had come to witness my promotion. 



98 APPENDIX 

A wretched fugitive, I arrived at this very port which now stretches itself 
out before our eyes. Here I shipped as a sailor and sought the utter- 
most parts of the earth. 

" 'Years on years I kept to the high seas, always choosing the ships 
which would take me farthest from the scenes with which I had become 
familiar. All great ports I visited, many a language I learned. Steadily 
T prayed the gods some time to bring me to some haven where I might 
learn the secret of a holy peace within. 

" *At last one day — I can never forget it — in a great city many a thou- 
sand miles toward the sunrise, a city which is the commercial metropolis 
of the greatest republic in the world — I was pacing heavy-hearted up and 
down a massive pier at which lay vessels from many a nation. The 
wharves were perfectly quiet, for it was a holy day. I was sadder than 
usual, for I was thinking of my useless prayers. I was saying to myself: 
"I am as blind as ever, as much at war within. So many, many years 
have I prayed and waited and waited and prayed. The gods have neither 
brought me to the truth nor the truth to me." In my bitterness I said: 
"The gods themselves are false ; men's faith in them is false. There are 
no gods, there can be none. They would have some compassion, they 
would regard my cries." Bursting into tears, I sobbed out : "I cannot live 
in such a world. I cannot live. Let me but sink in death's eternal night." 
And as I sobbed out the bitter cry the rippling water in the dock sparkled 
in my eyes and seemed to say, "Come, com€, one brave leap only, and 
I will give thee peace !" 

" 'Just then a handsome stranger, arrested perhaps by my strange be- 
havior, stopped in passing and spoke to me. In words of tender sympathy 
he asked my trouble. Too weak to resist, I told him all. How beamed 
his face with gladness ! "Come with me," he said. "This very day your 
year-long prayers are to be answered." I followed, and a few rods dis- 
tant he showed me what I had never seen before, a floating temple which 
he had in charge. It was dedicated, I was told, to the great God. And 
when I asked which great god, the priest of the beaming countenance said, 
"Have you never heard of the great King above all gods?" Then he 
brought out a Holy Book and read to me these words : "O come let us 
sing unto the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salva- 
tion. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a 
joyful noise unto him with psalms. P'or the Lord is a great God and a 
great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth ; 
the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his and he made it, and his 



APPENDIX 99 

hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us 
kneel before the Lord our maker. He is our God, and we are the people 
of his pasture and the sheep of his hand." 

" 'Then this strangely joyful man — Hedstrom was his name — told me 
that this great God did truly care for every man who truly yearns for in- 
ward peace. He said he was a rewarder of all who diligently seek him; 
that he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for the 
saving of all who want to be saved from sin, from self-condemnation 
and despair. He assured me over and over that this divine Son was 
both able and willing to save to the uttermost all who come unto God 
through him. I could hardly believe such tidings. I said, "You mean 
that all your countrymen who thus come to your patron God may find 
peace and divine favor." "No," he responded, 'T mean all — mean you — 
mean everybody whom this great Being has made to dwell on all the face 
of the earth, for as the Holy Book says : 'There is no difference between 
the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that 
call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall 
be saved.' " 

" ' "But do you mean that I can call upon him and be delivered from this 
load I have carried so many years?" 

" ' "Certainly." 

""'And be delivered now?" 

" ' "Certainly. 'Now,' says the sacred Book, 'is the accepted time ; be- 
hold, now is the day of salvation.' " 

" 'It was enough. Down I fell upon my face. Aloud I cried unto the 
Great God. Through his Son I sought to come unto him. But, believe 
me, before I could well frame my words — it zuas the day of salvation. 
My weary load was gone. My heart was full of peace and of strange new 
life. I knew that there exists a Power which can deliver man and plant 
within him everlasting blessedness.' 

"Gentlemen of the World's Convention, one word, and the story of that 
wanderer is complete. That truant sailor proved to be my own elder 
brother, proved to be the long lost son to fill whose vacant place my 
mourning parents had dedicated me to this same holy calling. My heart 
was broken with a double joy at this discovery. And before we left that 
wave-worn shore the day of salvation had also dawned on me. To-day 
I can testify that a perfect religion is not a dream. To-day I possess and 
can give you its credentials." 

Just at this point in the speaker's remarks the long-continued closeness 



100 APPENDIX 

of the atmosphere and the crushing pressure of the crowd proved more 
than I could bear. A certain dizziness came over me and I had to be 
carried from the hall. When I next came to consciousness it took me a 
long, long time to discover that I was safe at home in my study chair, 
and that I was waking from a weird and wonderful dream. 

Shall I interpret my dream? You have well-nigh done it already. In- 
deed, it interprets itself. The great hall, corresponding to the Meiji Kuaido, 
is the great world of our modern civilization. Within it are assembled the 
elect spirits of every nation. About its doors hang millions of our hu- 
manity, conscious of their own lack of light and truth, awaiting the dis- 
coveries of their better qualified representatives. Within, the highest, the 
never-ceasing debate relates to Human Perfection, and to the means for 
its attainment. The ever-eloquent debaters dwell now upon one phase 
or force, and now upon another, but the theme is ever the same, ever the 
perfection of human beings and the way to this perfection. Some are 
seeking a perfect industrial adjustment, others a perfect education, others 
a perfect government, others a perfect social order, others — that they may 
combine and unify all — are in quest of a perfect religion. Each one of 
you, dear hearers, is about to receive appointment as a delegate to 
this World Convention. Therein some of you will be called upon to 
speak, all of you will be called upon to vote, in the presence of a hundred 
nations. The World Convention will insist on knowing what you can tell 
it respecting its supreme problem. And you will have to meet the demand 
in a publicity as wide as the world. The days of personal and national 
isolation are forever gone. Under the same roof with our vanishing 
American aborigines, within earshot of the moans of Africa, in full view 
of the cruel idolatries of Hindustan, in full knowledge of the hungry- 
souled millions of China, in the face of Europe's self-sophisticated and 
gloomy agnosticism — in the hush of an Almighty Presence — you, each 
one of you, is going to tell the world what you know respecting human 
perfection and the road to its attainment. As thoughtful students you 
must long ago have seen that there can be but one absolutely true and per- 
fect religion ; further that the perfect religion must present a perfect 
object of worship, that it must demand of man his highest devotion, and 
must promise to man his highest good. Long ago you must have seen 
that the highest possible love should rule both worshiper and worshiped, 
and that this highest possible love necessitates closest possible union in 
some form of life, human and divine, I but utter your own inmost con- 



APPENDIX loi 

viction when I add, that a religion consisting of supreme and mutual love 
between a perfect divine object and a perfectly responsive human subject 
can need no other credential than that which is given in its own uplifting 
and life-giving presence. On such qualifications for world-service I con- 
gratulate you. You hold in your hands and hearts the one solution to all 
earth's problems. To you it has been given to know of the divine origin, 
the divine possibilities, the divine destination of this living mystery in 
human form. You know the path of deliverance from evil, and who it is 
that opened it. You possess ideals of human perfection fairer, higher, 
broader than any of which ethnic sages have ever dreamed. You know of 
a life which even in its earthly stages is full of righteousness and peace, 
of love and good fruits. Publish it to the weary world. Exemplify it in 
church, and court, and hospital, in schoolhouse and in home. Count it the 
prima philosophia, the highest of all sciences, the finest of all fine arts. 
Let it be the one knowledge in which you glory, the one knowledge by 
which 3^ou seek to bring yourselves and all selves unto glory everlasting. 

Apostles of human perfection, apostles of the perfect religion, why 
should you not enlighten, why should you not emancipate the most distant 
continents ? One sage of Asia, wise with a lesser wisdom, enlightened 
with a lesser light, has given ideals to millions. Ye are sages also — more 
than a hundred strong. This day I commission you, in Christ's name I 
command you : Be ye in truth, as he himself has styled you, the light of 
the world. 

And now unto the perfect Teacher of this perfect Way be honor, and 
glory, and dominion, world without end. Amen. 

Note. — The World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, in 1893, was 
in a remarkable measure the realization of the foregoing dream. (See 
the official "History of the Parliament," edited by Dr. Barrows, vol. I, pp. 
9, 10). The dreamer had little thought of ever seeing such a realization 
attempted. He simply gave his dream one summer day as a baccalaureate 
address before the graduating class of his University, and left it like the 
poet's "arrow shot in air." Before he was aware the discourse had been 
printed in five large English editions in the United States, Canada, and 
India ; had been translated into Spanish and issued in the City of ]\Iexico ; 
translated into Chinese and published in Shanghai ; translated into Japa- 
nese and published in Yokohama. Later, a gentleman in Calcutta wrote 
to an entire stranger in America proposing to aid in raising a fund for the 
free distribution in India of one hundred thousand copies. Seven years 



102 APPENDIX 

after the first edition appeared, came the famous Parliament of Religions. 
The joyous man who brought the final speaker into possession of the 
credentials of the perfect religion, was "Pastor Hedstrom," the happy 
Swede who for many years ministered in a floating Bethel at one of the 
docks in the harbor of New York. 



III. ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS OF THE UNIVERSE 

Abbreviations for Reference 

AOT = "Astronomy in the Old Testament." By G. Schiaparelli. 

CHR = "The Cradle of the Human Race." By W. F. Warren. 

DC —"The Dawn of Civilization." By G. Maspero. 

EC ="The Earliest Cosmologies." By W. F. Warren. 

MP =- "The Myths of Plato." By J. A. Stewart. 

PS — "Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler." By J. L. E. Dreyer. 

1. Draw, or describe, the Babylonian universe as pictured, by Maspero, 
DC, p. 542. 

2. Wherein does it differ from the Egyptian universe as pictured by the 
same author in DC, p. 17? 

3. Wherein does it differ from the universe represented in the frontis- 
piece of the present volume, or in EC, pp. 33-40? 

4. Draw, or describe, the Hebrew universe as pictured by Schiaparelli in 
AOT, p. 38 (reproduced in EC, p. 27). 

5. On what grounds is this rejected in EC, pp. 29-32? 

6. Draw, or describe, the Homeric universe as represented by Dreyer in 
PS, pp. 6f., and as represented in EC, pp. 70-78; 157-191. 

7. Wherein agree, and wherein differ, the cosmologies of Plato and 
Aristotle? See PS, MP, etc. 

8. Who long before the time of Columbus taught that the earth is a 
sphere? See Dreyer, PS, pp. 20, 38, 39, 53, 55, 117, 158, 172, 192, 220, 
223, 225, 227, 229, 232, 234, 242, 243, 249. 250. 

9. By what arguments did Cosmas Indicopleustes attempt to disprove the 
sphericity of the earth? See his Christian Topography, translated by 
J. W. McCrindle. 

10. Among what peoples do we find the heavens and hells conceived of 
as numbering seven or more? See EC, passim. 



APPENDIX 103 

11. What is said of the Pillar, or Pillars, of Atlas in CHR, pp. 350-358? 

12. How many times, and for what purpose, is Mohammed said to have 
journeyed, from the sixth to the seventh heaven? EC, pp. 55ff. 

13. Describe the tenants and conditions of life in the sixth heaven of 
the Buddhists? See EC, p. 141. 

14. Where may be found further investigations into the cosmological 
ideas of the ancients? 

Answer : In the following publications among others, to wit : 
E. Walter Maunder, of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, "The 
Astronomy of the Bible," 1908. Same author, ''The Bible and Astron- 
omy. The Annual Address Before the Victoria Institute, 1908. 

Same author. Article in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomic 

Society, vol. Ixiv, pp. 488-507. E. W. and A. S. D. Maunder, 'The 

Oldest Astronomy," Three Papers. Journal of the British Astronomical 

Association, vol. viii, p. 373; vol. ix, p. 317; vol. xiv, p. 241. "Ages 

of the World," in Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1908), 

vol. i, pp. 183-210 B. G. Tilak, "Orion : Researches into the Antiquity 

of the Vedas," 2d ed., 1903. Same author, "The Arctic Home in the 

Vedas, 1903, pp. 245ff, 454ff. J. R. Harris, "The Cult of the Heavenly 

Twins." 1906. R. Brown, "Researches into the Origin of the Primi- 
tive Constellations of the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Babylonians," 1900. 

Two vols. W. W. Bryant, "A History of Astronomy," 1907. 

E. M. Plunket, "Ancient Calendars and Constellations." R. Beazley, 

"Dawn of Modern Geography," 1897. Flammarion, "Astronomical 

Myths." R. A. Proctor, "Light Science for Leisure Hours." 

Spence Hardy, "Legends and Theories of the Buddhists." Lockyer, 

"The Dawn of Astronomy." W. H. Tillinghast, "Geographical Kjiow- 

ledge of the Ancients," in "Winsor's History of x\merica," vol. i. 

W. F. Warren, "Why More than One Hole through the Moon?" in The 
Classical Review for 191 1 (refers to a passage in Plutarch). 



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OCT 12 1JM 



